Homeland Security plays games while deportations fall flat

The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t deported nearly enough illegal aliens to justify the massive distraction and cost of providing security for the 2026 World Cup. In Secretary Kristi Noem’s own words, “the 2026 FIFA World Cup is anticipated to be the largest, most complex sporting event in the world — equivalent to a dozen Super Bowls over a single summer.”

Congress already allocated $625 million for World Cup security in Democrat-run cities, many of which fight Trump’s immigration agenda at every turn — including his effort to make those cities safer. That sum doesn’t even touch the other operational costs the administration will pick up, diverting substantial law enforcement bandwidth away from deportations.

In the absence of a serious mass deportation drive, hosting a summer-long soccer spectacle is an insult to Americans who want their country back.

Why shower these hostile jurisdictions with taxpayer dollars to celebrate a recreational export from the third world? It makes no sense. The DHS fills its feeds with memes invoking legacy America, then turns its focus from mass deportations to futbol. Add to that the wave of tourist visas that will be handed out to international fans, swelling an already absurd total of 55 million visa-holders inside the United States.

The numbers don’t add up

The Trump administration’s deportation progress remains anemic. Reliable statistics don’t exist because they aren’t being published, which runs directly against Trump’s own promises of transparency. It also mirrors the very failure senior Trump officials once blasted Biden for — refusing to release numbers.

What little we do know is piecemeal. The DHS told CNN that ICE deported nearly 200,000 people in the first seven months of Trump’s term. A senior official even boasted that put ICE “on track for its highest rate of removals in at least a decade.” But that still fell short of the administration’s stated target.

Even taking the 200,000 figure at face value, we’re still talking sub-Obama-level numbers. When Americans voted for Trump, they voted for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. The second item on his 20 campaign promises spelled it out: millions removed from the interior, more than at any time in history.

Trump himself often invoked Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” as the benchmark. By most estimates, that meant removing about half of the illegal aliens in the country. Applied today, that’s roughly 10 million people — half of the often-cited 20 million total. Nothing we’ve seen so far comes close. The math just doesn’t math.

Self-deportation is a mirage

In the absence of solid deportation numbers, the administration has leaned on funky “self-deportation” estimates instead — survey-based economic studies that supposedly suggest that millions have left. The methodology is flimsy.

Worse, the DHS already has a direct way to measure: the CBP One app, which offers illegal aliens $1,000 to sign in and self-deport. Hundreds of millions have been spent promoting it. So how many have taken the payout? The DHS won’t say. And are we really to believe that “millions” of aliens supposedly self-deported while leaving free money on the table? Of course not.

The silence here tells the truth: The numbers don’t exist, which is why they aren’t public.

RELATED: Mass deportation or bust: Trump’s one shot to get it right

Photo by Emilio Flores/Anadolu via Getty Images

The wrong priorities

In the absence of a serious mass deportation drive, hosting a summer-long soccer spectacle is an insult to Americans who want their country back. Soccer remains the least American major sport, beloved mainly among non-English-speaking immigrant populations. Its popularity reflects our feckless, America-last immigration policy, not cultural confidence.

It would be both a political and operational mistake to stage a massive security mission for futbol while mass deportations continue to lag. For a DHS that has prioritized slick communications above execution, one can only imagine the hollow theatrics that will accompany this event.

If the administration starts putting commas into deportation numbers, maybe the World Cup can be tolerated. Until then, it is the wrong priority at the wrong time.