by Jacob G. Hornberger

May 6, 2026

In the midst of massive death and destruction inflicted by the U.S. government in Iran, Venezuela, the Caribbean, and here economically in the United States — and, before that, in Iraq and Afghanistan — and, before that, in Vietnam and Korea, it is easy to forget that the U.S. government is still inflicting economic destruction here at home with its immigration police state.

There are, of course, countless horror stories of human suffering that the Trump administration has inflicted on people with its ruthless and brutal immigration police state, especially with ICE and Border Patrol raids, masked kidnappings, squalid detention centers, and forced deportations.

A representative example of this deadly and destructive rampage appears in an article about a car wash business in Philadelphia in yesterday’s New York Times. The car wash is owned by a guy named Jeffrey Lee. Last year, masked ICE agents raided his car-wash operation and arrested seven of his workers, all of whom were here illegally.

Since then, Lee has had a terrible time getting his business back on track. He has cycled through 100 workers, some of whom did not last an hour in their new jobs. Some of the ones who stayed were totally incompetent. In the process, Lee lost many of his customers. He still isn’t back to profitability. Lee stated, “It tested me at every level. Spiritual. Mental. Physical.”

The Times points out what everyone knows: “In the past year, [the Trump administration] has conducted raids around the country targeting big businesses like Hyundai and, more often, smaller ones like Lee’s. The goal: to make it harder for immigrants living in the U.S. unlawfully to work in the country, and create more jobs for Americans.”

As I detail in my book The Case for Open Borders: A Primer, I know exactly what Lee is going through. I grew up on a farm on the Rio Grande. Like Lee, we hired illegal immigrants to help us with our crops. The Border Patrol would periodically enter our farm — without a search warrant and without probable cause — and arrest and deport our workers.

For many years, the immigration police state that comes with America’s decades-old socialist (i.e., central planning) immigration-control system was mostly confined to the borderlands. So long as other Americans remained in the rest of the United States and didn’t visit the borderlands, they were pretty much immune from the immigration-control tyranny to which people in the borderlands have long been subjected.

No longer. Acknowledging that the decades-old immigration police state along the border had not succeeded in its goal of keeping out illegals, Trump and his people have expanded the immigration police state to other parts of the nation. Those ICE agents who raided Lee’s car wash didn’t have a search warrant or probable cause. They raided a privately owned business and detained people because they could.

How did that raid on Jeffrey Lee’s car wash and the deportations of his workers benefit America? We know that they didn’t benefit him or his workers, but how did they benefit America?

Indeed, how did the arrests and deportations on our farm on the Rio Grande some 60 years ago benefit America? I know for a fact that they didn’t benefit my family or our workers, but how did they benefit America? One thing is for sure: The warrantless searches and seizures on our farm didn’t help bring an end to the federal government’s perpetual war on illegal immigration. It’s still going on sixty years later — and will go on in perpetuity so long as America continues with its socialist immigration-control system and the deadly and destructive immigration police state that comes with it.

Sure, it’s not as bad as being bombed by the U.S. military or murdered on the high seas for suspicion of being a drug dealer but it’s essentially as bad as when the U.S. government intentionally inflicts economic harm on people with its brutal and ruthless systems of sanctions, embargoes, and blockades.

Think about it: Jeffrey Lee voluntarily chose to hire those illegals. His workers voluntarily chose to work there. Both sides were benefiting, as were Lee’s customers because he had a first-rate car-wash business. That’s what is called economic liberty, freedom of contract, freedom of association, free enterprise, and free markets.

And then come the U.S. government — the greatest purveyor of violence in the world — and unleashes a violent raid that produces nothing but misery and suffering — and, in the process, destroys the rights and liberties of the American people.

It’s time for some serious soul-searching in America. Is all the death, destruction, and suffering being inflicted by the U.S. government and its evil systems of immigration controls, foreign interventionism, the drug war, and the national-security state what Americans still want? Or is it time to restore the sound principles on which our nation was founded and move in the direction of liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world?