Democrats from New York to California have launched a media-magnified PR campaign to argue millions of illegal migrants hired by employers should be exempt from the nation’s deportation laws.
But immigration czar Stephen Miller is using Twitter to expose the Democrats’ claim that migrants somehow become legal when they accept wages far below the levels needed by ordinary Americans.
“There are entire sectors of the economy in Los Angeles that depend on immigrant labor,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a June 16 tweet that suggested the state’s population of illegal migrants is irreplaceable. “This administration is waging a war against our own economy,” she declared.
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Miller quickly responded: ‘The Los Angeles Mayor says her economy is dependent on vast criminal lawbreaking and the federal government should ensure vast criminal lawbreaking continues forever.”
California Sen. Alex Padilla rushed to her defense, saying “You’ve got it flat out wrong, @StephenM. Let’s not forget California has the world’s 4th largest economy in the world because of immigration, not in spite of it.”
Miller leaned in, saying:
Senator, please clarify your position. Are you saying you do or do not want a vast illegal alien workforce in California? As to GDP, mass migration slashes *per capita* wealth. Eg, if California annexed Haiti its GDP would grow $20B but the average CA worker would be much poorer.
“Mass migration is a wealth (and political power) transfer from the American working class to migrants and to corporations,” he said in his next tweet.
In contrast, Trump’s enforcement of migration laws is helping to raise Americans’ wages and productivity. On June 17, Miller reposted a White House tweet boasting of a 2 percent wage gain for blue-collar workers amid the White House’s campaign against illegal migration:
Many Democrats also argue that illegal migrants should be exempt from deportation unless they are convicted of crimes.
On June 17, for example, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul promised to help deport criminals as she urged Trump’s deputies to accept the taxpayer-aided poor migrants who accept jobs at low wages that would other go to better-paid Americans and their high-tech machines:
I will help you get the criminals out of here, the ones who are violent criminals who are hurting other people, the human traffickers, the people who are dealing in drugs, people with guns. I want them gone.
I’ll help you, but don’t take the home health care aides, the 160 [migrants] who are going to lose their jobs that I met today and talk to … The people who work in the restaurants and hospitality, let them get jobs, pay their taxes, be part of our communities.
That PR strategy is also designed to pull Trump and GOP-leaning business groups away from the populist GOP coalition that won the November elections.
Miller responded to the Democrats’ don’t-deport-working-migrants claim on June 11:
If your stance is that we can only deport illegals *after* they violently attack a citizen then you’re saying we have no border at all. Zero rules. Zero restrictions. No limits. Anyone can come. Anyone can overstay a visa. Anyone can stay forever. Total anarchy. Nation dissolved.
This open borders view also means instead of removing unvetted illegals before a potential rape, assault or murder you have to wait until after an innocent American has been brutalized. And schools, hospitals, neighborhoods must absorb the entire world, without relent.
The Democrats’ demand for more migrants is a political and economic strategy for a party built on high taxes, government spending, and enforced diversity.
For example, both the Democratic establishments in New York and California rely on waves of poor illegal migrants to replace the middle-class Americans who are pushed out of those states by the Democrats’ mix of high taxes, costly housing, mass migration, poor schools, and low-wage jobs.
In April, the Census Department reported that California and New York in 2023 had the highest child poverty rates in the United States. They also have the highest levels of adult poverty after Louisiana.
Meanwhile, Democratic governors and mayors are doing little to stop or deter their street allies from challenging federal agents on the streets. Miller has a response to that, too:
“America voted for mass deportations,” Miller tweeted June 11. “Violent insurrectionists, and the politicians who enable them, are trying to overthrow the results of the election.”
The Democrats’ dangled offer — tacit amnesty for millions of foreign workers in exchange for temporary street peace — is not admitted by the establishment media. Instead, establishment reporters prefer to write articles that promote empathy for the migrants being repatriated.
But some Democrats hint at the underlying bargain. For example, Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s border chief, told Puck News on June 17:
In all three administrations, the top priorities for deportation were public safety and national security threats. And when this administration took office, that’s where they started—with rounding up the criminals, which many people, including myself, think is a good thing.
But to do that, you have to have a relationship with local law enforcement in big cities. You have to be able to work with them, and they have to be willing to work with you. [emphasis added] So that’s part of the conundrum here.
So far, Trump and Miller are using the federal police forces to overcome the Democrats’ “Sanctuary City” policies and mob riots.
“We’re being pushed to a breaking point right now. And I worry about how it’s going to come out,” Johnson added.
In their districts, the Democrats are politically on safe ground because there is vast empathy among progressives and Democratic voters for migrants who have not been found guilty of committing a crime. That naive empathy can be exploited because Democrats and their media allies hide the vast economic, civic, pocketbook, and foreign costs of the establishment’s ruthless, wealth-sucking Extraction Migration policy.
“While President Trump says he is defending Los Angeles from a ‘foreign invasion’ the only invasion we see is the one he is leading,” L.A. teacher Glenn Sacks wrote on July 17:
Unfortunately, many Americans are cheering him on and vilifying immigrants, Angelenos and Californians. Perhaps I’m naive, but I believe that if they could see these families and their struggles up close, they would change their views.
At my school, we don’t see a dystopia of lawbreakers and freeloaders. We see an often heroic generation of immigrant parents working hard to provide for their children, while also sending remittance money to family members in their native countries. We see students who are (usually) a pleasure to teach, and parents who are grateful for teachers.
But amid massive spending and the Democratic-controlled empathy, California’s K-12 scores keep declining. “Half of [California’s] students met the state standard in English, while one in three were proficient in math,” the Public Policy Institute of California reported in June 2025. It added:
Proficiency rates were highest among Asian students: just above 70% in English and nearly two-thirds in math. White students’ rates were lower, with 60% meeting the standard in English and 50% in math. Proficiency rates were lower on average for Black and Latino students—24% and 37% in English, respectively, and 18% and 30% in math.
Trump’s staff and skeptics of immigration recognize the Democrats’ deportation-for-criminals-only policy is new clothes for their old open-borders policy.
“If you focus on just the criminals, you have conceded that immigration [by non-criminals] is unlimited,” Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Politico for a June 16 article. “Is that where the president is? I don’t think so,” he said.
Miller knows the amnesty-for-peace deal from Newsom, Hochul, and Bass would merely be a cover for Democrats as they use migration to change American politics: