Donald Trump has squashed the American dream. The administration is on its way to achieving what it promised, but at what cost? The President had been campaigning for the deportation of illegal aliens before he even took office. What followed for months were aggressive raids that were widely criticized.
The Trump administration has managed to carry out the biggest deportation programs in the history of the nation. The President has justified the deportations by claiming that they were necessary to safeguard the country’s borders.
🚨 BREAKING: President Donald Trump has intensified immigration enforcement, declaring, ‘We’re moving murderers out of our country who were put here by Biden… We’re not going to let them stay,’ and warning of ‘equal or greater force’ against any resistance. pic.twitter.com/2TCzGaBdCh
— FAN TRUMP ARMY (@TRUMP_ARMY_) August 21, 2025
Dana Taylor, a host of USA TODAY’s The Excerpt podcast, got into the consequences of the deportations. “President Donald Trump campaigned on securing the nation’s borders and deporting undocumented immigrants he described as dangerous criminals,” she began.
She went on to point out how the administration has often resorted to an “aggressive enforcement agenda,” which has been widely criticized and labeled unlawful by many. Some of these have included workplace and neighborhood sweeps and deploying an increased number of ICE agents.
Taylor claimed that immigrants are now considering “the risky trek north” while rejecting the idea of the coveted American dream. The host pointed out how the deportations have resulted in a “reversal of flows” in Mexico and Central America.
Daniel Gonzalez’s conversations with migrants from Mexico and Panama are proof of the same. The immigration reporter from The Arizona Republic was asked how things have changed at the U.S.-Mexico border since Trump took office.
“Impact at the southern border is very, very dramatic,” he noted on an episode of the podcast. He admitted that in his 25 years of work as an immigration reporter, he has never seen a situation like the current one. Gonzalez revealed that at the moment, “so few people” were crossing.
The reporter also recalled how in April of 2025, there were barely any crossings at all. He labeled it as a “remarkable, dramatic decrease” in migration ever since Trump took office.
“Just to give you an example, in August of 2023, border-wide, there were 232,000 encounters of undocumented people along the southern border. In August of this year, there were 9,000,” he added.
He explained how, as a result, migrants are now heading south. Gonzalez shared how these migrants had seen clips of ICE agents aggressively handling immigrants and heard of illegal aliens being arrested and prosecuted on criminal charges.
These were the prime reasons listed by people who have decided against migrating to the U.S. He revealed how immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti are now opting to go to countries like Venezuela instead to make a better life for themselves.
Fewer than one-third of the individuals arrested by Border Patrol during the Trump administration’s recent immigration enforcement crackdown in Charlotte were classified as criminals, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News.
The… pic.twitter.com/Il4k5VkmcT
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 25, 2025
The immigration reporter also noted how the slowing down of migration is an “absolute win” for the Trump administration. “Many sectors of our economy are heavily dependent on immigrant labor—sectors like construction, hospitality, agricultural work, caregivers, and elder care,” he added.
The Trump administration’s goal to carry out massive deportation programs is sure to leave a labor gap in these industries. The reporter then addressed the implications of the Big Beautiful Bill that the President signed this year. He noted that tens of billions of dollars will be put into tightening the borders and hiring Border Patrol and ICE agents.
