If illegal immigrants are now staying away from work, because they are afraid that ICE will show up, nab them, and deport them, doesn’t that mean:

• The illegal immigrants will quickly run out of money;
• When the illegals run out of money, they’ll quickly run out of food and shelter; which means
• The illegals will realize that they have to leave the United States on their own, and self-deport.

How would this not be a good thing?

Philly migrants skip work, school, and shopping amid fears of ICE enforcement

“We are not all thieves, we are not murderers. We are just normal people that work their hardest to have a better life for our kids,” said one undocumented immigrant at the Italian Market

by Jeff Gammage, Ximena Conde, Michelle Myers, and Kristen A. Graham

Every Sunday morning, Nelly Garcia slides into a pew at St. William Roman Catholic Church in Northeast Philadelphia, meeting a close friend for the Spanish-speaking service, but this week something was off.

Her friend didn’t show up.

She decided it was too risky, since she is undocumented, that ICE agents could appear and deport her to Guatemala.

“She’s already told me, ‘If [ICE] gets me, you’re in charge of sending me my things,’” said Garcia, 49.

If Miss Garcia’s undocumented friend goes ahead and returns to Guatemala on her own, she’ll have no record of deportment, which means that she could apply for legal immigration without that handicapping her. Or, she could simply continue to live in her home country.

In the first nine days of the Trump administration, reports of ICE activity have ricocheted across the Philadelphia region, driving anxiety in immigrant communities and causing some people to change their routines and step back from daily life.

Oh, so their social and economic lives are being disrupted? Great! Perhaps that will make them miserable enough to leave!

On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a North Philadelphia car wash, arresting seven migrants and sparking a protest by about 25 pastors, activists, and city residents outside the agency’s Center City office. Philadelphia ICE officials said they could provide no information on the arrests.

On Wednesday, rumors of an impending ICE raid unsettled Philadelphia’s famous Italian Market, closing businesses and leaving stalls vacant.

That’s good information. If ICE documents which businesses have closed and stalls left vacant, they will have some evidence of which business owners and stall vendors are in the United States illegally, enabling them to make more targeted raids and arrests.

There’s a long section which follows just full of the human interest stories of illegals in the city, which, as we have previously noted, constitute roughly three percent of the population in Philadelphia.

Clergy there and elsewhere said they were keeping phone lines open, and a surge of calls came in to St. Thomas Aquinas from worried worshipers, said the Rev. Wilmer Chirino, the pastor.

He pledged that ICE agents would be stopped at the door, barred from entering even if they carried a legal, judicial warrant. Admittance would come only through the approval of the pope’s personal representative in the United States, he said.

That, of course, would be a felony. Is Father Chirino willing to go to prison, to shield other criminals? Will the Most Reverend Nelson Jesus Pérez, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, tell Fr Chirino to stand down?

Then we come to the money line, far down in the story:

A recent poll by Ipsos and the New York Times showed that 63% support removing undocumented immigrants who entered the country during the last four years, and 55% said they favor deporting all those who have no legal permission to be here.

Those poll numbers are important. President Trump received just slightly under 50% of the total vote in 2024, and ‘only’ 50.75% of the serious, two-party vote — I do not regard votes for third-party candidates with no chance at all to win as serious votes — yet the support for the President’s immigration policies is higher than the percent of the vote he won. Fifty-five percent want to kick them all out, regardless of how long they’ve been here. One would think that the Democrats, who kept telling us that the 2024 election was necessary to save democracy, would support the democratic choice the voters took in that free and fair election!

The insane part of all of this is that, during his first term, President Trump had managed to dramatically reduce the number of illegal immigrants coming to the United States, and if President Biden had just retained Mr Trump’s policies, rather than reversing them as soon as he got into office, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. Even if Mr Trump had won the 2024 election without the immigration issue on his side, the problems would have been considered mostly solved, and the illegals wouldn’t have any more reason to be worried than they were during Mr Biden’s term.