Fear Works
It Not Only Causes Self-Deportation, It Causes Remigration
Mitt Romney gave us the phrase, or at least popularized, self-deportation, which is when illegal aliens leave the United States on their own volition because the government through enforcement and other means made their lives in the United States to difficult to continue. It is for illegal immigration, but what of legal immigrants and those who naturalize? They must be forced out by other means fair and foul. Unless some Act of Congress creates wider reasons for denaturalization, which currently can only occur if the alien obtains naturalization by fraud or undiscovered criminal history or drug use prior to being naturalized or by similar conditions that would have prevented the alien from obtaining the underlying immigration benefit that led to naturalization. Expanding the denaturalization process to post-naturalization conduct, such as crimes, drug use, welfare use, or, even more importantly, incompatible social, ethnic, or racial basis or economic failure or welfare burden, is what is generally referred to as remigration, which can include though encouraging those naturalized to leave, but not lose citizenship.
Obviously denaturalization is preferred, as is a process for depriving their children of citizenship as well, for as we know, the hard working Mexican illegal or immigrant births entitled welfare users and criminals without the work ethic.
Fear, of course, is the best method to encourage illegals and even some legal immigrants to leave. That is what Mitt Romney hoped would underpin his immigration policy. Scare the illegals away.
It appears to be working, the first step is that the illegals have to cower in their homes and apartments fearing the long arm of the Mean Green Machine, the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) and the ICE man, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Once they fear to go out, they lose jobs and income, then lose their homes to eviction or foreclosure, they cannot eat, they cannot take their children to the free school that they came for. There is no reason to stay. They then decide to go home voluntarily. Fear, the mind killer, first, then self-deportation.
We see it in New Orleans now.
The doors of Carmela Diaz’s taco joint are locked, the tables are devoid of customers and no one is working in the kitchen. It’s one of many once-thriving Hispanic businesses, from Nicaraguan eateries to Honduran restaurants, emptied out in recent weeks in neighborhoods with lots of signs in Spanish but increasingly fewer people on the streets.
In the city of Kenner, which has the highest concentration of Hispanic residents in Louisiana, a federal immigration crackdown aiming for 5,000 arrests has devastated an economy already struggling from ramped-up enforcement efforts this year, some business owners say, and had far-reaching impacts on both immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
“Fewer and fewer people came,” said a crying Diaz, whose Taqueria La Conquistadora has been closed for several weeks now with both customers and workers afraid to leave home. “There were days we didn’t sell anything. That’s why I made the decision to close the business — because there was no business.”
On Wednesday, convoys of federal vehicles began rumbling back and forth down Kenner’s main commercial streets as the Department of Homeland Security commenced the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations that have included surges in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. Bystanders have posted videos of federal agents detaining people outside Kenner businesses and at construction sites.
Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino also made an appearance in the city, surrounded by agents in tactical gear, to tout to reporters the launch of the operation dubbed Catahoula Crunch, a name derived from the big game hound that is the Louisiana state dog.
Shops Empty In A Hispanic Neighborhood As Immigration Crackdown Comes To Louisiana, by Jack Brook and Sara Cline, AP/OzarksFirst, December 5, 2025
That is the first step. The second is self-deportation. That is happening all over the country.
New data from the Trump administration suggest a steady rise in immigrants self-deporting, after officials strongly encouraged those without legal status to voluntarily leave.
Newsweek has analyzed numbers released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which provided recent records of immigrants to depart the U.S. through July 31, 2025.
Since President Donald Trump took office on January 20, ICE had deported 145,419 illegal immigrants from its detention centers, peaking in June with a total of 27,970.
New ICE Data Shows Steady Rise in Immigrants Self-Deporting, by Dan Gooding, Newsweek, September 5, 2025
Self-deportation works, it only needs to be vigorously encouraged by actual and very public arrests and involuntary deportations.
It is clear that the hero immigrant in the first story, the now legal Salvadoran restaurant entrepreneur, has a business model based on hiring illegals and serving illegals. She will soon be out of business and will have to make a decision, open a restaurant not using illegals working 12 hour days without overtime, or, like another alien in the story, just go home, remigrate. And they will, if we let them know they are not wanted.
