The federal government cannot deport millions of illegal aliens alone — and at present enforcement remains far below the scale the problem demands. Sixty-one percent of Americans support mass deportations, and President Trump has made the issue a signature priority of his administration, yet deportation numbers remain stubbornly low.
According to the DHS, only 675,000 illegal aliens, have been removed since January 2025, well below the 1.3 million deported from 1954-55 by the Eisenhower administration, which President Trump promised to beat. Twelve to thirty million illegals remain behind. But red states do not have to stand by while the federal government struggles alone. Republican governors and state legislators already possess the tools necessary to place their states at the forefront of the deportation effort.
This January, ICE arrested Julio Cesar Xocop-Vicente in South Carolina after he struck and killed a fifteen-year-old girl named Amber Paris. Xocop-Vicente is an illegal alien who had previously been arrested in 2023 for drunk driving and driving without a license. Despite that arrest, he was released and allowed to continue living and working in South Carolina. A child is dead because this man entered the country illegally, was taken into custody, and was nevertheless permitted to remain. South Carolina’s government did nothing to prevent it.
South Carolina is hardly alone in this failure. Like many red states, it has largely declined to act—not because effective policies are unavailable, but because they have not been adopted.
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