Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims that a whopping 1.6 million people without legal immigration status have departed from the United States since the advent of the Trump administration. She hails this as a monumental achievement, foreseeing safer streets, reduced taxpayer burden, and improved job prospects for Americans.
The figure Noem cites comes from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group known for advocating lower immigration levels. Yet, even CIS admits that its estimate might be overstating the decline. The method they’ve employed to arrive at this number is riddled with caveats. They’ve based their analysis on data from the Current Population Survey, which doesn’t even inquire about respondents’ immigration status. It’s like trying to count your chickens before they’ve hatched, using a flashlight and a hopeful heart.
The CIS acknowledges that stricter enforcement measures may be scaring off immigrants from participating in the survey, thereby falsely inflating the apparent drop. Further muddying the waters, data on legal immigration through July 2025 remains incomplete, casting a cloud of uncertainty over the estimate.
The proof of the pudding, and some have tasted and found the CIS’s figure hard to swallow. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), for instance, contests the administration’s claim of 135,000 deportations in April, estimating the actual number to be closer to 72,000.
Are these claims about 1.6 million departures simply a smokescreen for an administration keen to tout its successes, real or imagined? After all, the immigration issue is as thorny as a cactus, and presenting it in a simplistic light does a disservice to the complexity of the matter.
The enduring American values of fairness and truth demand that we scrutinize these claims with a wary eye. Navigating the muddy waters of immigration policy and enforcement requires more than just a catchy headline. It requires a commitment to the truth and the courage to face it, even when it’s as uncomfortable as a porcupine in a petting zoo.
