Parts of the MAGA movement are unhappy with President Trump’s migration strategy. The administration has softened its policy on deportations following a public uproar over the ICE killings in January, it is said. The focus has been on removing only the most violent offenders.

“The truth is the first year was not a year of mass deportation,” says Mike Howell of the Mass Deportation Coalition. “A conscious decision was made to go after the worst first, which was, we’ll call it a deviation, from the central campaign promise of mass deportations.”

Such criticisms miss the point. The Trump administration has tackled the worst offenders to shore up support for its wider migration crackdown. And that crackdown has been wildly successful. Net migration is negative for the first time in half a century, with more than a quarter of a million people leaving last year. The real success has been in stopping people from entering the United States in the first place. No other nation can claim to have addressed its immigration problem at such scale and speed.

In so many other ways, the second Trump presidency appears to be going awry. The Iran war is a strategic quagmire. The upcoming midterm elections look extremely challenging for the Republican party, as voters find themselves turned off by the return of inflation and the unpleasant resurgence of a cost-of-living crisis........

© The Spectator