Trump’s mass-deportation promise needs receipts



I do not believe the actual deportation and self-deportation numbers are anywhere near the roughly 3 million claimed in Department of Homeland Security press releases.

This is more than a hunch. The published figures appear mathematically impossible.

If a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico left the United States, there should be visible statistical evidence.

That is a serious problem, which is why the Oversight Project has announced a lawsuit to force the DHS to release the underlying data.

Some people will be surprised that a Trump-aligned legal and investigative organization, best known for exposing the autopen scandal, is suing the administration’s Department of Homeland Security.

Here is why.

Trump’s central promise

Immigration enforcement has been the central thesis of President Trump’s political career.

It began with “build the wall” after he descended the golden escalator in 2015. He returned to office with 77 million votes after promising mass deportation.

Agenda 47 contained only 20 major promises. The first was to secure the border, and the administration deserves enormous credit for doing so — even as House Republicans refuse to codify those gains without attaching amnesty for illegal farmworkers.

The second promise was to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.

Trump repeatedly indicated that this meant surpassing President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 operation, which some estimates say reduced the illegal population by 31% in a single year.

With two and a half years remaining in office, Trump is entering the period when presidents begin thinking seriously about legacy.

If “promises made, promises kept” is to mean anything, the deportation machinery must begin operating at full capacity now. Only then can removals reach the millions during the administration’s final years and surpass Eisenhower’s record.

Trump has the resources to do it. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is better funded and equipped than ever.

The administration should direct ICE toward high-density workplaces where illegal labor is concentrated — factories, farms, hotels, restaurants, warehouses, and meatpacking facilities — while imposing serious penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

That is how the numbers begin rising rapidly.

Surpassing Eisenhower would be the natural culmination of Trump’s political career. It would fulfill the promise at the center of his movement and provide the necessary answer to the Biden years, when roughly 10 million illegal aliens were allowed into the country and dispersed throughout American communities.

Those illegal aliens are still here. Trump can still remove them.

RELATED: The birthright ruling leaves Trump one clear move

Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The amnesty lobby needs inflated numbers

The second reason for demanding transparency is that the amnesty lobby does not care what Trump promised.

Many Republicans rolled their eyes when he pledged mass deportation. They quickly began trying to narrow enforcement to a small category of the “worst of the worst” criminals.

The reason is obvious: The amnesty lobby, especially its Republican wing, is in love with cheap illegal labor. Its members fiercely oppose worksite enforcement, even though worksite enforcement is the only realistic way to generate removals on the scale Trump promised.

They are already preparing their next push for what they will call “comprehensive immigration reform,” the familiar euphemism for mass amnesty.

The Dignidad Act has roughly 20 Republican co-sponsors. The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026, another amnesty proposal for illegal farm laborers, has attracted more than 40.

Congress is also considering reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Over time, that law has encouraged migration from noncontiguous countries and fed migrants into labor- and sex-trafficking networks.

It has also created a funding stream for left-wing nongovernmental organizations now suing the Trump administration, undermining both the war on fraud and the work once associated with the DOGE.

The House and Senate are full of pro-amnesty Republicans financed by industries that profit from cheap labor. Most are not going anywhere soon.

Their preferred argument is predictable: Enough people have already been deported. Now it is time to make a deal.

We will not allow them to make that case using inflated numbers.

The amnesty lobby used the same tactic during the Obama administration. It combined border returns with formal removals to portray Barack Obama as the “deporter in chief.”

The goal was to make Obama look tough enough to create political space for amnesty. That strategy produced the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, which collapsed after a national populist revolt, and the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

That revolt also helped create the conditions for Trump’s rise.

I was born at night, but not last night.

The amnesty lobby is preparing to run the same play again.

The numbers don’t add up

The third reason for the lawsuit is simple: The public deserves the real figures.

The DHS recently gave several media outlets the following statement:

In President Trump’s first year back in office, more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations. As of June 24, we have now deported over 948,000 illegal aliens and arrested over 981,000 illegal aliens.

Consider the first sentence.

It refers specifically to Trump’s first year back in office, from January 20, 2025, through January 20 of this year. The same claim appeared on the DHS website.

If 3 million people left and 2.2 million supposedly self-deported, that leaves approximately 800,000 formal deportations or removals.

But DHS has provided no evidence supporting the claim that 2.2 million people self-deported.

The administration has pointed to the CBP Home app, yet only about 72,000 people reportedly used it to leave as of March. I have reason to believe even that number may be overstated.

That leaves a gulf of more than 2 million people.

RELATED: A real nation knows who is in and who is out

Blaze Media Illustration

If a population roughly equal to that of New Mexico left the United States, there should be visible statistical evidence. School enrollments, rental markets, remittance flows, employment records, border crossings, airline bookings, and foreign-government data should all reflect it.

The DHS should be able to produce that evidence.

Now consider the claimed 800,000 deportations during Trump’s first year.

The department’s fiscal year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification states that the DHS and ICE removed or returned 442,637 illegal aliens during fiscal year 2025, which included several months of the Biden administration.

That figure combines removals, which are closer to formal deportations, with returns, which often occur at the border.

Even with those categories combined, the official budget figure is little more than half the number implied by the press release.

The second sentence creates an even larger problem. If 800,000 people were deported during Trump’s first year, how could the cumulative total be only 948,000 seven months into 2026?

That would mean the administration deported only 148,000 people during those seven months.

The numbers do not add up.

Anyone who travels the country, follows social media, or watches television knows skepticism about these claims is now widespread. That is creating a political problem, especially among young Republican men who rank immigration enforcement and national sovereignty among their highest priorities.

Fortunately, the problem is fixable.

The administration can expand full-scale worksite enforcement and produce real, rapidly increasing removal numbers. It can then release those figures transparently, every month, with the same attention given to the jobs report.

Mass deportation is part of the glue holding Trump’s coalition together.

Regular, verifiable reporting would generate enthusiasm and demonstrate that the administration has not retreated from its defining promise.

The Oversight Project does not want Trump to fail. We want him to succeed.

That begins with knowing the real numbers.

Life Lessons from Lamar

Retired U.S. senator Lamar Alexander has produced a readable, insightful, in places surprising, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny memoir. He has, however, given it the wrong title, or rather subtitle.

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Charles Not in Charge: King’s Visit Hits All the Right Notes but Doesn’t Reflect Reality

King Charles III’s trip across the Atlantic came at a difficult time. The Iran campaign marks a low point for the transatlantic alliance, his host country is preparing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of evicting his family’s rule, and the "no kings" protests remind Britain’s royals that many Americans still equate monarchy with tyranny.

The post Charles Not in Charge: King’s Visit Hits All the Right Notes but Doesn’t Reflect Reality appeared first on .

China’s soft-power trap in your backyard: How the CCP uses sister cities to undermine America



Battles are escalating regarding America's sister-city agreements with China. Critics express concerns about national security, while advocates of sister cities argue that the program fosters relationships that promote world peace.

There are over 100 "friendship" or "sister" city partnerships between the U.S. and China, according to a 2023 membership directory from Sister Cities International. Only Mexico and Japan have more sister-city agreements with the U.S.

'We are being overwhelmed by China on our own soil, so this is indeed an emergency.'

Sister Cities International, a nonprofit, was founded by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 as part of his People-to-People program, which he believed was crucial for "helping build the solid structure of world peace."

"If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together and to leap governments — if necessary to evade governments — to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other," Eisenhower stated during the People-to-People Conference in 1956.

During a 1961 speech at the World Conference on Local Governments, Eisenhower stated that 150 U.S. communities had already "established regular communication with their counterparts in more than 40 countries of the free world."

The sister-city program gained rapid momentum, but the first U.S.-China relationships were not formed until 1979. Although the program was created to promote global harmony, its expansion to communist nations has raised concerns in recent years amid increasing tensions with the CCP.

RELATED: China’s back door into our military? US recruiters use CCP-controlled messaging app to target Chinese nationals

Beijing City Promotion and Beijing-New York Sister City Concert, in New York on June 24, 2024. Photo by Winston Zhou/Xinhua via Getty Images

Some politicians and China experts believe sister cities are one of the Chinese Communist Party's many soft-power propaganda methods.

Gordon Chang, a Gatestone Institute senior fellow, told Blaze News, "China uses every point of contact to infiltrate, influence, corrupt, and take down our society. The sister-city relationships seem innocuous, but there is nothing innocent in anything the Communist Party does. Nothing."

"I would like to see President Trump use his emergency powers to prohibit these sister-city tie-ups," he added. "We are being overwhelmed by China on our own soil, so this is indeed an emergency."

One of the most notable spying cases in recent years can be connected to the United States' sister-city program. Christine Fang, also known as Fang Fang — a suspected Chinese spy who infiltrated political circles, allegedly assisted Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D-Calif.) re-election campaign, and even reportedly formed romantic relationships with two mayors — attended the 2014 Sister Cities International conference in Washington, D.C. As a volunteer in the office of former Fremont, California, Mayor Bill Harrison, Fang reportedly coordinated discussions to establish a sister-city relationship between Fremont and a city in China.

Arkansas and Texas draw a line

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed House Bill 1352 into law in April, broadening a previous 2021 law prohibiting higher education institutions from hosting Confucius Institutes. The latest legislation extended that ban to "similar institutes related to the People's Republic of China, including without limitation a Chinese cultural center."

The bill also barred municipalities from having sister-city partnerships with a "prohibited foreign party." The legislation aimed to force Little Rock to end its relationship with Changchun, China, an agreement formed in 1994.

However, instead of complying with the new law, the Little Rock Board of Directors is trying to circumvent it by changing the partnership from a "sister city" to a "friendship city."

According to Sister Cities International, friendship cities are "less formal."

"In some cities, 'friendship city' is often used as a first stage in the relationship, and after it is strengthened and the partners are sure they want a long-term relationship they will become 'sister cities,'" Sister Cities International's website reads.

Sam Dubke, Sanders' director of communications, told Blaze News, "Governor Sanders has been clear Arkansas cities are prohibited from having sister cities in Communist China. The City of Little Rock's rebrand does not make their sister city agreement legal, and Governor Sanders will enforce Arkansas law."

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) in June signed similar legislation prohibiting sister-city agreements with any "foreign adversary," including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

The legislation is slated to take effect in September, and it will potentially impact relationships in Austin, Fort Worth, and San Antonio.

Fort Worth City Councilman Michael Crain, who lived in Beijing for eight years, has already opposed the governor's ban, calling the city's partnership with Guiyang "really just a beautiful relationship across the board, because people understand people on a one-to-one exchange."

"Our city council and mayor sanctioned this relationship 15 years ago," Crain told WFAA-TV in May. "Their government is also involved because that's how you do the exchanges, but I think as you unpack it, this is about understanding other cultures, how they operate, and how we operate. That, in essence, we're a global society."

While Texas and Arkansas seek to clamp down on sister-city agreements over potential CCP influence in the U.S., a city in Iowa recently opted to renew its partnership with China despite warnings from its Republican governor.

Davenport Mayor Mike Matson announced in April that the city had signed an agreement to extend its sister-city status with Langfang, China, for another five years, even with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) expressing concerns last year that China has "grown significantly more aggressive on the world stage, constantly looking for any opening to assert themselves at the expense of our country."

'The history of the program demonstrates that all of China's partnerships aim to deliver asymmetric returns to China.'

Federal-level action

Building on these state-level efforts, federal lawmakers are taking action to address the issue at a national scale. In response to the growing threat from China, Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in April introduced the Sister City Transparency Act, which aims to take a closer look at these relationships. If passed, the legislation would direct the comptroller general to conduct oversight of sister-city agreements with countries "with significant public sector corruption," including China and Russia.

Earlier this month, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) introduced the Washington Sister Cities Act to prohibit the U.S. Capitol from having a sister-city relationship with "foreign adversarial regimes," including the CCP.

A press release from Stefanik's office noted that the "primary focus" of the legislation is to force Washington, D.C., to end its partnership with Beijing, which was established over 40 years ago. Stefanik argued that the CCP has "weaponized" the sister-city agreements "to advance their malign disinformation campaign," ultimately forming a "pathway to spy on our government."

Moolenaar called D.C.'s relationship with Beijing "troubling," citing China's "worsening human rights conditions."

RELATED: University of Michigan now under fire after Chinese scholars allegedly smuggle bio-weapon

Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images

China's united front strategy

The CCP's management of its sister-city partnerships has been tied to its United Front Work Department.

According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the CCP's UFWD is responsible for coordinating influence operations to "neutralize sources of potential opposition" to its policies and authority. A 2018 report from the commission explains that the department "mostly focuses on the management of potential opposition groups inside China, but it also has an important foreign influence mission."

"To carry out its influence activities abroad, the UFWD directs 'overseas Chinese work,' which seeks to co-opt ethnic Chinese individuals and communities living outside China, while a number of other key affiliated organizations guided by China's broader United Front strategy conduct influence operations targeting foreign actors and states," the report reads.

The commission goes on to state, "It is precisely the nature of United Front work to seek influence through connections that are difficult to [publicly] prove and to gain influence that is interwoven with sensitive issues such as ethnic, political, and national identity, making those who seek to identify the negative effects of such influence vulnerable to accusations of prejudice."

Nathan Picarsic, senior fellow focusing on China at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, elaborated on how China manages its sister-city relationships.

"Sister-city relationships are framed as mutually beneficial artifacts of people-to-people diplomacy," Picarsic told Blaze News. "But as is the case with most of China's international engagements, sister-city ties with a Chinese city trace back to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party's centralized vision for global influence."

"The Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), which is an organ of China's United Front, manages formal sister-city relationships," he continued. "And the history of the program demonstrates that all of China's partnerships aim to deliver asymmetric returns to China: whether that was inbound investment and technology access in the 1990s or subnational influence to subvert national security concerns in the current moment. China looks to use sister cities as a way to cultivate friendly voices and to localize China's arguments on a global basis."

Sister Cities International did not respond to a request for comment.

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West Point Trades Real Reform For Illusory Paper Compliance

If the academy cannot produce officers loyal to the Constitution, its leadership is not just failing, it is compromising national security.

Weekend Beacon 3/16/25

Last week, while Trump hosted Ireland's prime minister at the White House, the parish of St. John the Beloved, just across the river, held its annual Irish-Italian cookoff. The competition is closer than you think—one side is a cornucopia of potatoes, corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes (did I mention potatoes?) and the other side is a sea of red.

The post Weekend Beacon 3/16/25 appeared first on .

FACT CHECK: Video Claims To Show USS Dwight D. Eisenhower With Scorch Marks

A video shared on X claims to show the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower with scorch marks in Norfolk, Virginia. #ايزنهاور مخزوقة..#Eisenhower هو الله pic.twitter.com/0n4WMQWXhP — ع الـ(ع) (@Alhussaini21S) June 2, 2024 Verdict: False The image appears to be from April 2023. It has been photoshopped to include scorch marks. Fact Check: Houthi rebels claimed to have […]

Levin: After THIS 'how could you NOT call Hamas Nazis?'



While America is divided on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mark Levin is sure that one side is getting it right.

And that’s the side that isn’t cheering on what Levin calls “the second Holocaust.”

“I understand 6 million Jews are not being slaughtered,” he explains, “but they want to slaughter 7 million Jews. That’s the whole point of this.”

While many Americans believe they know what happened during the Holocaust, they don’t know just how involved the Palestinians were in it.

In 1941, Haj Amin Al Husani, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders in order to persuade them to extend the Nazis' anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.

The grand mufti offered to help the Third Reich slaughter Jews in the Middle East and contributed 5,000 men to the Third Reich army.

This mindset has not been left behind, but it’s been carried on to the Palestinian people, who are taught at a young age that the Jews are not human beings.

“They’re taught that they kill, dismember, and cannibalize Palestinian babies and so forth. The most horrendous kind of indoctrination and propaganda at the earliest ages,” Levin explains.

Essentially, the children are being taught to reflect Nazi values.

“So, Al Husani was a Nazi,” Levin says, and now “they want to blame the Jews and they want to blame Israel.”

“Their long-term if not short-term goal,” he continues, “is to blow the Jews out. To obliterate them, to mass kill them. Genocide, that’s their objective.”

And Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine, is overseeing it.

“The truth is Abbas is a very, very wealthy man,” Levin explains. “He controls every penny that comes in there. They run it like the mob, they divide their economy in the sectors, he puts family members in charge of the sectors or his closest friends or political allies in charge of the sectors, and they rule over the economy and they rule over these towns like butchers.”

And they use that power to raise potential terrorists.

“As long as they can keep indoctrinating and brainwashing the children who become, many cases, terrorists, and focus their fire on the Jews in Israel, they can continue to line their pockets,” he adds.


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Whitlock: The fall of Afghanistan illustrates the utter failure of the ‘intelligence community’ President Eisenhower predicted



America today isn't hard to understand. In his farewell address 60 years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower explained the destructive path the "intelligence community" planned for us.

His explanation went well beyond expressing fear of a military-industrial complex. He warned that secularism, technology, and academia beholden to government would conspire with the military to undermine the greater purpose of our nation.

Every failure we're witnessing today — from Afghanistan to Big Tech censorship to critical racism theory being taught in our schools — can be traced to the 15-minute warning Eisenhower delivered on Jan. 17, 1961.

The American people have been stripped of their power. A cabal of military, political, technological, media, and academic elites has seized control of our republic under the pretense of fortifying democracy. I call the cabal the "intelligence community," the elites who are convinced their degrees, titles, fancy word salads, and wealth make them a superior breed of human being. They practice intelligence supremacy. They grab power in the sincere belief that their ascendancy assures the safety and prosperity of the world at large. They are the most high.

Everyone outside this country can easily see that America no longer serves a higher power or a higher purpose. The Taliban conquered our military might because they justifiably rejected the secular values we tried to impose on their country.

That is not written or said as an endorsement of Sharia law, the set of Islamic religious rules that denies women equal rights. It's stated to expose the folly of thinking secular values could unseat religious ones in Afghanistan. You can't subdue the Greater Middle East with guns and drones, bombs and airplanes. Muslims, and other highly religious people, do not fear death the way Americans do.

Our military-industrial complex cannot control the Taliban or end their belief in the patriarchy. They're not trapped in the American-made matrix President Eisenhower predicted six decades ago. Eisenhower's farewell address is too often solely reduced to his military warning. His speech was much more than that. The World War II hero outlined the threat of Marxist political ideology in layman's terms.

"We face a hostile ideology — global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method," Eisenhower said. "Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment."

That is Eisenhower, in 1961, telling us that a war is being waged in the minds of Americans. Would we remain one nation under God, or would a hostile, atheist ideology overrun our religious values and love of freedom?

Eisenhower then pivoted to discussing the dangers of an American society trapped by military expense.

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience," he said. "The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

From there, Eisenhower urged Americans to be suspicious of the federal government's influence on scholarly research and science. Sixty years ago, Eisenhower warned us about the Trust the Science movement. It's as if he knew one day America would provide funding for a lab in Wuhan, China.

"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields," he said. "In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity."

Finally, Eisenhower forecasted that Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and the satans of Silicon Valley would become our rulers.

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect," he said, "as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Sixty years ago, our 34th president interpreted George Orwell's book, "1984," which was published four years before Eisenhower ascended to the presidency.

Two years after Eisenhower left office, President John Kennedy was assassinated. Five years later, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. President Kennedy defied our military commanders in his handling of Cuba. Bobby Kennedy's first presidential campaign speech, "Conflict in Vietnam and at Home," centered on exiting the Vietnam War. Dr. King spoke against the Vietnam War.

I'm not wearing a tin-foil hat. Neither was Dwight Eisenhower.

The whole world, even Taliban soldiers hiding in mountain caves, can see that our military, academic institutions, politicians, spying agencies, media, tech billionaires, and celebrity class have been corrupted by a blind pursuit of power, money, and fame.

Long before we surrendered Kabul, we surrendered the moral high ground through fear and cowardice. As control of America was stripped from the people, a handful of public executions silenced dissent. No one should be surprised the Taliban embarrassed us abroad. Our intelligence community has been embarrassing us at home for 60 years.