Total national security shutdown: Immigration cessation has long-standing historical precedent

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he intends to "permanently pause" immigration from all Third World countries and reexamine green-card holders who are not a "net asset" to the country. 

Trump posted on social media: "I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization."

The term "Third World," in the modern sense, is a reference to poorer nations ("developing") with a Low Human Development Index (HDI). The term originated during the Cold War to describe nations not aligned with either the US (First World) or the Soviet Union (Second World). Today, it has evolved to refer to developing countries, often with economic instability, high poverty, and lower standards of living. Political correctness has guided many to prefer terms like "developing countries" or "low and lower-middle-income countries." 

Long history of immigration shutdowns

The total or near-total shutdown of immigration has been enforced many times throughout U.S. history during several crises, most recently in 2020 when Trump’s Proclamations 10014 and 10052, combined with a global shutdown of U.S. embassy visa services due to COVID-19, effectively stopped almost all immigrant and most temporary-worker visa entries for months. 

National security has been the basis of such shutdowns as long ago as in the early part of the last century. During the Great Depression and World War II, from roughly 1930 to 1945, strict application of the “likely to become a public charge” clause and wartime security rules drove legal immigration to near-zero levels without a single blanket ban. Similar de facto pauses occurred in 1918–1920 amid the Spanish flu and postwar chaos, and again in the months following the September 11, 2001, attacks when consular processing was largely suspended for security reviews. 

While landmark laws such as the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the 1924 Immigration Act sharply curtailed inflows through numerical limits, the only modern instance of a formal, broad suspension explicitly pausing virtually all legal immigration channels remains the 2020 COVID-19 measures.

As early as 1919, the Department of Justice deported more than 500 people, including notable anarchist Emma Goldman. Nearly 10,000 people in 70 cities were arrested on the basis of the spread of radicalism and immigration from Europe in what is called by historians "The Palmer Raids," named after then-Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Since the start of Trump's involvement in politics in 2015, he has made illegal immigration a hallmark issue of his campaign. During his second term, deportations have been a divisive issue, separating liberals who oppose the raids and deportations and those who support the moves to decrease the illegal immigrant population. 

Nobody is certain about the illegal immigrant population

In Charlotte and surrounding communities, ICE enforcement operations in recent weeks have left some day-labor pickup sites, apartment complex parking lots and certain shopping centers noticeably deserted during hours that were previously crowded with workers. Community members and business owners in similar affected cities, including Atlanta, Nashville and parts of suburban Chicago report the same pattern, leading many to question if the official estimates of the illegal immigrant population living in the U.S. are underestimated.  

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through its Office of Homeland Security Statistics, provides the most authoritative estimates of the illegal immigrant population. The figures are derived using the "residual method," which subtracts the estimated number of legal immigrants from the total foreign-born non-citizen population in Census Bureau surveys like the American Community Survey (ACS), while adjusting for undercounts, deaths and emigration.

Between 11 and 20 million

DHS's latest publicly available comprehensive estimate, released in April 2024, places the illegal immigrant population at 11 million as of January 1, 2022. Critics of the official estimates, including former Border Patrol chiefs, analysts at the Center for Immigration Studies and FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), argue that the true unauthorized immigrant population is likely between 15 and 20 million or higher, contending that DHS and Pew figures substantially undercount recent border crossers, visa overstays, and those evading census surveys entirely.

Trump concluded his Thanksgiving night social media post with a warning that said, "HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won’t be here for long!"