Donald Trump’s Incompetency and the Immigration Shell Game

Let’s “Make America Great Again” with “the greatest mass deportation in American history.”  So says “The Donald.”

It ain’t gonna happen.  

Trump’s first term displayed nothing but immigration enforcement incompetence. Breaking through the false narratives reveals the truth that despite Trump’s racist anti-immigration rhetoric, he did a lousy job enforcing immigration law.

The numbers for the Department of Homeland Security show Trump’s underwhelming immigration enforcement performance. The term “deportation” is a shorthand way of counting both “removals” (the official term for a formal deportation) and “exclusions” (where a person is not even allowed in the United States but is sometimes applied retroactively to people already here). Deportation also often includes “returns” (where an undocumented person gets sent back to their country without a formal deportation). 

Grouping all the above categories shows Trump only deported 3,132,269 people during his first term but Biden deported over a million people more at 4,449,599. Trump beat out Obama’s second term numbers of 2,871,899, but Obama edged him out during his first term with 3,160,140.    

Clinton is the overachiever here, beating out everyone including Reagan and the two Bushes with 5,466,520 in his first term and a whopping 6,744,723 for his second.  

What the numbers show is if you want immigration law enforced and people deported, vote Democrat!    

So far, Trump’s second term shows the same incompetence. In the two weeks between Inauguration Day and Feb. 3, 2025, Trump deported 5,693 people. In November 2024, Biden deported 48,970, averaging around 12,200 a week. So even with Trump’s great splash claiming he will deport more people in the history of America, he remains over four times behind Biden.  

Despite the racist barrage of insults and childish taunts, Trump once again dropped the immigration enforcement ball.   

Disruptive incompetence is the Trump approach. In his first term, Trump put Tom Homan in charge as ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) acting director. Homan now joyfully threatens local officials in so-called “sanctuary cities” with unspecified “criminal charges” while making braggadocious claims about immigration enforcement. Trump bestowing the imaginary title “Border Czar” on Homan does not change the lack of competency. The latest reports are that Trump is angry over his Border Czar’s low deportation numbers.

Trump’s frustration is to be expected. Only a competent administration would understand that the roughly 8,500 border patrol officers cannot deport the estimated 11 to 13 million undocumented persons in the country. Also, there are about 600 immigration judges with backlogged cases.  

Meanwhile Trump’s oligarch-in-residence Elon Musk has already sent a letter to all federal employees including border patrol agents, officers, and immigration judges suggesting they take a buyout. All of this, of course, underscores the incompetency of wanting to beef up law enforcement but at the same time taking away the resources to do so.

Given these realities, the Biden success in removing people from the United States is remarkable and something Trump lacks competence to duplicate.  

Take the recent snafu with Colombia regarding a military plane full of Colombian (and other) deportees. Colombia is America’s strongest ally in the region offsetting a true Marxist dictator in Venezuela and helping us fight the cocaine trade. Colombia always repatriated its citizens after deportations, and it had accepted over 100 flights in 2024. But the Trump/Homan immigration team did not see fit to give Colombian authorities notice before the military plane arrived. (After all, it’s only polite when you invite hundreds of deportees to dinner to at least notify the host!) Moreover, they handcuffed the deportees in a military plane. Colombia rejected the plane.  

If Trump destroys enough of democracy, he will discourage immigrants from coming by turning the United States into what he calls “a shithole country.”

But it turned out to be a great opportunity for Trump to bully an ally with the threat of tariffs into taking an airplane it would have taken anyway if the matter had been handled competently.  Doing this to Colombia is not in the United States’ interest.  

Trump’s whole “America First” schtick does nothing more than hide incompetency all the while straining diplomatic relations with Latin America and Canada. Under Biden even Venezuela was willing to repatriate their deportees. But Trump’s plan now seems to be to send a bunch of people to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba at tax-payer expense? Or perhaps it is just “a concept of a plan”?

What about getting tough on our two largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico because of immigration. Biden reached accords with Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to keep undocumented immigrants out of the United States. These facts, though, do not stop Trump’s false narrative about Canada and Mexico allowing everything bad to flow into America.

Trump, who on the campaign trail called himself “Tariff Man”, imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods (or more accurately a 25% tax on American consumers). But it turns out Canada and Mexico cannot so easily be bullied. Canada hit back with its own counter-tariffs on $155 billion worth of goods including on Canadian eggs. So much for Tariff Man’s promise to bring down the price of eggs.  

For Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum posted, “I’ve instructed my economy minister to implement the plan B we’ve been working on, which includes tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico’s interests.” Mexico is the source of countless items that create American prosperity including parts to build our cars, agricultural products like good avocados, beer and decent burritos.

Tariff Man backed off. For all his bragging about “the art of the deal” Trump got the rest of us nothing. Once again Trump has proven his “negotiating ability” is nothing more than utter shamelessness and self-promotion advanced with a kind of cunning self-interest serving himself but not us.    

Trump’s narrative about “open borders” remains a false narrative with artificial milestones to claim success. (The last time the United States had “open borders” was in 1875 when the Page Act passed.) Under Biden, illegal crossings decreased. Biden’s immigration policy was a relative success. When Biden clamped down on asylum crossings decreased by 40%. It could have been better had Trump not directed his congressional minions to kill the bipartisan border security bill.  

For Trump, a pretend immigration crisis was far more important than a solution.  

During this last election, Trump rarely mentioned his signature policy from his first presidential race — building a border wall.  A border wall was always a bad idea. The billions of dollars to just buy the land to put it on was prohibitive. But even leaving the cost and practicality aside, a border wall would do nothing to stop most undocumented persons. Most did not cross the Mexican border at all but instead came to the United States legally — but then didn’t leave. This means that for about half of the 11 to 13 million undocumented people in America a border wall would be irrelevant.    

But a border wall to stop the minority of undocumented persons would do little to block people desperate for a better life for their children. Immigration and crime would just reroute through the Canadian border. Building a wall on the Canadian border is much harder politically because, let’s face it, most Canadians are white.     

But even putting aside the above facts, the first Trump administration proved itself incompetent to build it. Remember, regarding building things, it was Biden, not Trump, who got an infrastructure bill passed.   

In his first term, Trump failed to build a wall. 

He failed to marshal the resources from Congress, failed to gain a consensus of American opinion and failed at everything administrations do in a democracy to advance policy. Trump did, however, succeed in destroying the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan saw that the Berlin Wall could not stop desperate people from finding a way. His signature statement and true moment of greatness was when declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” A far cry indeed from Trump’s boast: “We’re gonna build a great big wall and have Mexico pay for it.”

Reagan had an unfailing belief in American exceptionalism. Immigrants do come here for economic opportunity. But they want to become American because we believe that “all men are created equal,” we uphold the Rule of Law and embrace equality of opportunity. Our open society and democratic republic drive American innovation and economic growth. It makes us different from other countries where dictators rule without democracy and oligarchs are happy.  

Donald Trump is anathema to these values. Unchecked, he will destroy the very things that make America great and exceptional. But maybe that is Trump’s immigration plan. Destroy American institutions and make oligarchs like Elon Musk happy. If Trump destroys enough of democracy, he will discourage immigrants from coming by turning the United States into what he calls “a shithole country.”

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Robert J. McWhirter is a constitutional law expert and a practicing criminal defense and civil rights lawyer in Maricopa County, Arizona. As a Democracy Docket contributor, Robert writes about constitutional and criminal law, with a particular focus on the Trump admintration’s undemocratic actions.