If the Department of Homeland Security is serious about increasing deportations, something some 77 million Americans presumptively voted for, the path forward isn’t new laws or even more immigration officers. Both would help, but neither addresses the core problem: DHS is not fully using the tools Congress has already built into the immigration system across its components. One of the most powerful and least understood involves the Visa Waiver Program, a reciprocal travel program Congress created that would enable some of the fastest, cleanest, and least contestable removals allowed by the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Travelers admitted under what immigration officers colloquially call “transit without visa” fall into narrow, short-term-purpose categories — waiver-business and waiver-tourism — admissions never intended to serve as a springboard to long-term presence.

The central challenge in immigration enforcement involves turnover: removing immigrants faster than new arrivals enter illegally and existing legal entrants remain, so the illegal migrant population does not continue to grow. Funding helps, but it doesn’t change the math. The illegal population is dynamic: some leave, some obtain legal status, some die, and yet still, new members arrive, and others don’t leave. Real progress would come from prioritizing categories where removals are legally straightforward and impose minimal procedural drag.

That begins with a basic fact: most illegal immigrants didn’t cross the border. For the two decades before 2021, at least half — and likely a majority — of new additions to the illegal population entered legally. Millions overstayed visas or visa-free admissions. And among........

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