The tactics of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda have shifted from time to time, but the broader objective has remained consistent: to deport as many people as possible and, more broadly, to transform the restrictions and reach of America’s immigration system.

President Trump and members of his administration believe they have a democratic mandate to do this. Their ultimate fear is that outsiders pose a danger to American values — the threat of not just taking our jobs or becoming welfare scroungers but also transforming our society into something different. “America First” means not so much putting Americans first as putting a distinct idea of America and American values first.

Yet the danger to those American values comes not from immigration itself but from immigration control. You cannot control outsiders (immigrants or would-be immigrants) without controlling insiders (citizens). The more vigorously you try to control immigration, the more you end up limiting the freedom of your citizens and violating equality and the rule of law.

This isn’t hypothetical. As Hiroshi Motomura and others have noted, during the Great Depression and in the years following World War II, an estimated two million people were forced to leave the United States. Astonishingly, more than half were American citizens, mostly people who were (or were suspected of being) Mexican. They were blamed for taking jobs and public resources and were deported or self-deported under intense pressure from authorities after targeted raids on neighborhoods.

This number does not include the many others who were wrongfully arrested, detained or incarcerated, often for days and weeks and sometimes for months or years, by the U.S. government. Nor does it include the many immigrants who were legal residents and were wrongly deported.

These statistics do not tell the whole story. To understand how immigration control undermines freedom — and the fundamental values not just of America but of most Western democracies — we need to look deeper.