Immigration control was a key feature of President Donald Trump’s first successful campaign for the White House, with the then-candidate’s warnings against the threat of mass migration echoing, whether he knew it or not at the time, the concerns voiced by Patrick Buchanan over a decade earlier. While immigration remained a significant issue in Trump’s 2020 campaign against ex-Vice President Joe Biden, it wasn’t until the 2024 election cycle that border security and mass deportations would become the focal point, following years of Biden and his deputy, Kamala Harris, allowing millions upon millions of unvetted foreigners to illegally swarm across the border into the U.S.

Before returning to the White House, Trump pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, attendees at the Republican National Convention carried “Mass Deportations Now” signs, and Democrats across the country began preparing their “sanctuary” jurisdictions’ resistance against the promised storm.

Since Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025, deportations have continued nabbing headlines. Indeed, hardly a day has gone by without Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, deportation flights, or the ensuing court battles over what the administration can and cannot do to secure the homeland dominating news cycles. Given all the brouhaha, it is shocking to realize that fewer than 400,000 interior deportations have been carried out over the course of a year. Meanwhile, multiple cities have been wracked by riots, which just this month led to two deaths in Minneapolis, not to mention the countless threats and assaults against federal law enforcement officials. With so much constant drama, one might expect the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda to be a little more… effective.

‘Shock and Awe’

The very day he was sworn into office for the second time, Trump initiated a “shock and awe” campaign to reclaim America for Americans. He issued a barrage of executive orders, including some highly controversial ones, in a “flood the zone” strategy, overwhelming progressive activists with so many hateful new rules that it was weeks before anyone figured out which orders to zero in on for legal challenges. The president employed a similar approach in terms of immigration. Newly-minted Border Czar and former ICE chief Tom Homan led a series of high-profile immigration raids, targeting major metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Miami, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

Shortly afterward, the Trump administration debuted a program to encourage illegal immigrants in the U.S. to voluntarily “self-deport,” rather than await being ambushed and handcuffed by the formidable ICE agents they had seen on television and in online video reports. The “shock and awe” tactic which characterized the first few weeks and months of Trump’s second term could have easily served to encourage (or frighten) illegal immigrants into self-deporting. But that “shock and awe” approach ceased to shock when it continued on for months and months more. Instead, the ostentatious immigration raids only achieved two seeming outcomes: prolonging a chance for Democrats to seize on aggressive tactics when used and demonize the mass deportation program, as well as inspiring progressive activists to protest and eventually riot, threatening the lives of patriotic federal agents and their families and putting innocent civilians in harm’s way.

Wanted: Smooth Operator

When Texas Governor George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, he brought with him a host of powerful and influential advisors and assistants, from Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to national security experts Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to savvy aides like Karl Rove and media wizards like Dana Perino. One of the most powerful figures in the W. Bush administration, however, was a man whose name is likely unfamiliar to most readers: David Addington.

A CIA lawyer, legislative assistant to President Ronald Reagan, and general counsel to the Department of Defense under George H.W. Bush, Addington joined the younger Bush’s White House as legal counsel to his good friend Cheney, before becoming Cheney’s Chief of Staff when I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and forced to resign from the role in 2005. Addington served as a highly effective behind-the-scenes operator in the W. Bush administration, authoring nearly 1,000 signing statements for the president and adamantly, though quietly, working to reclaim what he saw as the rightful constitutional powers of the presidency, stripped from the White House in the wake of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s subsequent resignation.

Over the course of his tenure in the younger Bush’s White House, Addington played a critical role in staffing the Department of Justice, particularly the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), authored the framework for the administration’s broad expansion of warrantless surveillance, and became the legal architect of the post-September 11 War on Terror, including influencing legal opinions on the detention of known or suspected terrorists and the use of what was called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Despite wielding tremendous influence and power, Addington was even more secretive than his boss, Cheney, and only spoke publicly once during the eight years he served in the W. Bush White House — and that single public statement was under subpoena.

Addington was brutally effective at his job. He demonstrated, repeatedly, that he had no interest in television interviews or book deals. He was not looking for a “feather in his cap” or a splashy title to put on his curriculum vitae. After departing from the White House in 2009, Addington served as a research vice president at The Heritage Foundation and a legal officer at the National Federation of Independent Business.

While Addington would no doubt have been derided as a “nation-builder” or “neocon” by Trump and his paleoconservative-skewing allies, due in no small part to the role Cheney’s lawyer played in foreign wars and interventionism, the Trump administration could greatly benefit from a mass deportation strategist with Addington’s personality: a smooth operator, fanatically devoted to the task at hand, completely and totally uninterested in either promotion or public acclaim.

Lights, Camera, Action!

The high-profile, “shock and awe” facet of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has seemingly outlived its usefulness. At this point, deportations should not crop up in headlines. They should instead be carried out quietly. The only signs the American public should have that the president is fulfilling his word on ridding the nation of millions of illegal immigrants should be regularly-released statistics from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), preferably totaling in the millions by the end of 2026, and the gradually improving quality of life in America, from deflating inflation to more affordable housing costs to the ability for a young woman to go for an early morning jog or walk a favored park trail without being raped or murdered. Instead, daily headlines feature some new update about ICE activities, cable news programs showcase footage of ICE raids, and online broadcasts and podcasts debate and discuss the legality or optics of whatever latest tactic ICE or agencies assisting ICE have employed.

A veteran law enforcement official (having served as a local police officer, a Border Patrol agent, and the head of ICE) as well as an inveterate professional, Homan seemingly took a veiled swipe at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a press conference this week. Following the shooting of Alex Pretti, the president deployed Homan to Minneapolis, instead of Noem. “I didn’t come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines,” the Border Czar said Thursday morning. “I came looking for solutions.”

Fox News interviews have proven an effective medium for the White House’s messaging at times, especially to broad swaths of the Republican voter base, while administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio make the rounds on less conservative-friendly news programs to defend or clarify administration actions or policies. But when deportation numbers have stalled at less than half a million after a full year in power, and high-profile operations met with high-profile riots result in high-profile fatal shooting incidents, in front of the camera may not be where leaders and strategists are most needed. In fact, it may be that such ineffectiveness and such tragedies could have been averted with less screen time in the first place.

Homan pledged that ICE operations in Minnesota will consist of “targeted” arrests, valuing precision over breadth. Such operations require fewer agents (Homan averred that a single arrest, at present, may require 16 or more agents, including those provided support against progressive agitators), automatically lowering the profile of immigration raids. Provided that state and local law enforcement do their jobs and provide crowd control, ICE operations should gradually fade from the headlines as protests wane. After all, marching against the “stormtroopers” seen daily on television is an easy enough decision to make. The motivation to do so is much more effervescent when no agents have been seen — on screen or in headlines — in weeks or months.

Addington’s is a good example to bear in mind. With a smooth operator behind the scenes, instead of in front of the camera, deportation numbers should increase while news articles about ICE only dwindle.