The first few days of President Donald Trump’s second administration have been busier than a Hillary Clinton aide on emergency document-shredding duty. But at the center of his breathtaking flurry of executive action — including the livestreamed murder of DEI, backing out of the Paris climate accord, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” — there’s the issue that will make or break his presidency: illegal immigration.

And so far, Trump is knocking this one out of the park. In just a few days, he reinstated the “remain in Mexico” policy, designated “certain international cartels” and organizations as foreign terrorist organizations, and suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. He has even set his sights on birthright citizenship, a route to citizenship that is being used and abused by illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, Trump has also delivered on his campaign promise to deport illegal immigrants, with hundreds deported last week alone.

In a move unimaginable had former President Joe Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris remained in the White House, Trump even signed an executive order directing authorities to deport noncitizens who bear “hostile attitudes toward [our country’s] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and … advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

So far on the subject of immigration, Trump gets an A-plus.

But to guarantee the momentum Trump will need to continue this crusade against illegal immigration in the weeks, months, and years that are ahead of us, we must fight just as hard against the propaganda being churned out by the Left in response. 

This includes emotional appeals tied to individuals supposedly stranded at the border, and it includes figures such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), herself a legal immigrant from Somalia, who labeled the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as “un-American,” despite it quite literally being signed into law by one of the Founding Fathers.

But perhaps the most laughable example is the shameless elitism at the heart of the Left’s outrage: the idea that illegal immigrants serve a money-saving purpose and should therefore be allowed to escape the law.

In short, they think illegal immigration is an economic necessity. This argument has not only been used by politicians and activists, but even the so-called bishop who lectured Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance during a service at the National Cathedral last week.

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they … may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” declared Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington. “But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

Not only does this argument miss the point entirely — as if the need for cheap labor supersedes its legality, and as if there are no differences between legal and illegal immigrants — we must recognize that this is the perspective of an elite.

An elite who can’t imagine cutting her own lawn, or cleaning her own pool, or picking her own children up from school, or an elite who personally benefits from the suppressed wages, and therefore increased profits, that illegal immigration guarantees.

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But why stop there? If lower labor costs are enough to justify open borders — with no regard for the crime associated with limitless and uncontrolled immigration — then why pay these illegal immigrants at all? Shouldn’t they be grateful to be in the United States? They want to be paid to pick our crops, to clean our office buildings, and to wash our dishes?

This sounds facetious until we remember that we’ve seen this before. In 2025, the economic argument against ending illegal immigration is, “Who will cut my lawn?” But back in 1865, the same sort of elites who opposed slavery were wringing their hands and asking who would pick the cotton.

Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth.