My New Liberalism.Org Article on How "Immigration Restrictions Restrict Americans' Liberties"

The biggest victims of immigration restrictions are the would-be migrants, who are consigned to a lifetime of poverty and oppression simply because they were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents. But the horrific experience of the second Trump administration highlights how restrictionism also poses a grave threat to the liberty and welfare of native-born citizens. While some of the harms caused to natives are specific to the policies of this administration, many are inherent in the very nature of exclusion and deportation, and they occur even under more conventional presidents. The ultimate solution is to end all or most immigration restrictions, or at least to severely curb them.

Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration enforcement officers have killed at least three U.S. citizens (two in Minnesota and one in Texas), wounded numerous others, and detained hundreds illegally, after mistaking them for undocumented immigrants. ProPublica found some 170 cases of illegal detention of citizens through October 2025, but that is almost certainly a severe underestimate, given that the federal government does not keep statistics on such cases, and ProPublica could only include those they were able to track down. ICE and other agencies also make extensive use of racial profiling, which leads to detention and harassment of numerous U.S. citizens who look like they may be Hispanic or belong to other nonwhite groups, and thus potentially suspect. The enormous extent of racial and ethnic profiling by ICE is shown by the fact that immigration arrests in Los Angeles County declined by 66 percent after a federal court order barring the use of such tactics; the ruling was eventually blocked by the Supreme Court.…

For all too many natives, immigration restrictions are literally a matter of life and death. The disproportionate role of immigrants in scientific and medical innovation indicates that large-scale exclusion prevents or at least postpones a wide range of life-saving innovations, thereby costing many American lives. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study found that a 25 percent increase in immigration rates would likely save about 5,000 lives per year simply by virtue of the fact that immigrants are disproportionately employed in the healthcare and elder care industries, and increased immigration would provide elderly people with more of the care they desperately need, in a society with an aging population.…

The immigration restrictions of the second Trump administration have inflicted even greater harm on U.S. citizens because they have been so egregious, including ramping up mass deportation efforts, greatly increasing the number of ICE agents (from 10,000 to 22,000) and expanding detention facilities. But it’s important to recognize that grave damage is inflicted even under more conventional presidents, even if it is less visible and garners fewer headlines. Illegal detention and deportation of U.S. citizens long predates Trump. Northwestern University political scientist Jacqueline Stevens estimates that the federal government detained or deported more than 20,000 U.S. citizens from 2003 to 2010, at a time when George W. Bush and Barack Obama—two relatively pro-immigration presidents—occupied the White House.