President Donald Trump repeatedly promised mass deportations while campaigning last year, and his administration is working hard to deliver on that promise. As anti-deportation riots spread across the nation, the president is not backing down on his agenda but promising more aggressive U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) raids.

“Our Nation’s ICE Officers have shown incredible strength, determination, and courage as they facilitate a very important mission, the largest Mass Deportation Operation of Illegal Aliens in History,” Trump declared in a Truth Social post late Sunday night. He added, “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” the president declared. He continued, “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.” Trump asserted that “Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them.”

“That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports,” Trump posited. The president added, “I want our Brave ICE Officers to know that REAL Americans are cheering you on every day. The American People want our Cities, Schools, and Communities to be SAFE and FREE from Illegal Alien Crime, Conflict, and Chaos.”

Speaking at the G7 summit, Trump reinforced his position, explaining that ICE agents are directed “to focus on the cities, because the cities are where you really have what’s called sanctuary cities, and that’s where the people are. I look at New York. I look at Chicago.” He continued, “Biden allowed 21 million people to come into our country. Of that, vast numbers of those people were murderous killers, people from gangs, people from jails, they empty their jails out into the U.S.” The president emphasized, “Most of those people are in the cities, all blue cities, all Democrat-run cities and they think they’re going to use them to vote. It’s not going to happen.”

So far, Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda has yielded results. While administration officials like border czar Tom Homan and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have demanded higher deportation rates, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) resident fellow in law and policy Andrew Arthur posited that the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration agenda has prompted almost one million illegal immigrants to self-deport. “While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary ‘mass deportation’ program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily,” Arthur wrote in the New York Post. One of Trump’s mass deportation “tracks” focuses on rounding up the most dangerous illegal immigrants in the nation, Arthur observed, but, he continued, “The other track is more subtle but also cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective — encouraging illegal migrants here to self-deport.”

“How effective has self-deportation been?” Arthur asked. Looking at employment statistics, the CIS expert determined that at least 773,000 have voluntarily left the workforce and the country. With significantly fewer illegal immigrants to employ, Arthur noted that “businesses have had to raise wages to attract workers,” benefitting American workers. He continued, “But aliens will only leave if they believe Trump and Homan are serious about arrests, and employers know the feds are targeting shady businesses.” Arthur concluded that the Trump administration “can’t arrest and deport 15.4 million illegal aliens, but if it simply enforces the law, many aliens will get the message and leave on their own — as hundreds of thousands apparently already have.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Arthur explained, “Self-deportation is a much more cost-effective alternative to physical deportation. The latter costs an average of $17,100 per alien, whereas the former is free for American taxpayers.” He warned, “To be effective, however, aliens here unlawfully must understand that they are facing the prospect of arrest, detention, prosecution, and removal. Anything that undermines that belief — including any announcements that certain aliens will be exempted from arrest and removal — will blunt the effectiveness of self-deportation.”