In the Press: The Supreme Court Unleashes the Deportation Agenda
Our comments to the media about the latest immigration news
I previously wrote about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mullin v. Doe, permitting the deportations of Haitians and Syrians with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), but here’s a rundown of our comments in the media about the case and other immigration stories.
A 6-3 Ruling Lets DHS Deport Legal Immigrants
On Wednesday, in Texas Public Radio, Andrew Schneider reported that the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling puts more than 1.3 million immigrants under TPS, including roughly 147,000 in Texas, “at imminent risk of arrest and deportation.”
The ruling did not just come under attack from the political left. David Bier, director of immigration studies for the libertarian Cato Institute, blasted the decision as fueling “the deportation agenda” of the Trump administration. “Going after legal pathways only creates more chaos and undermines the economic and fiscal benefits of immigrants by depriving immigrants of their ability to work legally and businesses of qualified workers,” Bier said. “It will be harder for the U.S. to compete on the global stage or keep up with a growing fiscal crisis if policymakers continue down a path that targets legal immigration pathways.”
The harshest turn against legal immigration in modern history
On Monday, in International Business Times, Bgie Areña reported that a new USCIS memo could affect “roughly a million people with pending applications” by requiring most green card seekers already in the country to leave and apply from abroad.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at Cato, called it the harshest turn against lawful migration in modern US history. “This admin continues to prove itself to be the most anti-legal immigration admin in U.S. history,” he wrote on X. “The harms this will cause to legal immigrants is incalculable. Impossible to explain how stupid and evil this policy is. It’s intended to cost people their jobs and their families.”
A 27% drop in approvals
On Tuesday, in USA TODAY, Ignacio Calderon reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 8.3 million applications in 2025, “a 27% decrease” from 11.4 million the prior year.
“When the workforce starts to decline, that means less economic growth. That means less things are produced, which means higher costs for consumers,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “It’s a real problem for the country that the administration has taken such a hard line, even against legal immigration.”
Doubling down on employer fines won’t shrink the deficit
On Monday, in KUER 90.1, Macy Lipkin reported that Utah Sen. Mike Lee is cosponsoring a bill to “double fines for immigrants who enter — or try to enter — the country illegally and employers who hire them.”
A 30-year study from the libertarian Cato Institute found that immigrants without legal status “likely reduced the deficit by at least $1.7 trillion.” David Bier, director of immigration studies at the think tank, said Lee’s assertion is incorrect. “Particularly illegal immigrants receive far fewer benefits and are much less likely to be in public schools than the U.S.-born population, and so they are paying taxes, and they are covering those costs.”
DOL’s case for higher H-1B wages doesn’t hold up
On Tuesday, the International Legal and Business Services Group reported that the Department of Labor’s proposed H-1B wage increase would price skilled foreign workers out of their own jobs.
According to the Cato Institute, the wage increase wasn’t based on legitimate wage surveys. The organization basically accused the DOL of inventing evidence to drive policy.
Immigrants and Housing: It’s complicated
On Tuesday, in Breitbart, Neil Munro reported that the White House says “rents are falling sharply across the country for the first time in years as the record surge in illegal immigration has been reversed.”
But even the business-backed, pro-migration Cato Institute admits that all migration — legal or not — forces young Americans to pay more for housing: “Even immigrants who work in construction increase housing demand first before they can construct more housing. That increase in demand drives up prices and incentivizes new supply through further construction, renovation, or increasing the supply of rental units through other means. However, the marginal immigrant increases housing demand more than he increases housing supply.”
“True Americans” over a growing economy
On Saturday, in NPR, Brian Mann reported that the U.S. now faces “record low birthrates and low numbers of migrants at the same time” for the first time since the Great Depression.
This kind of opposition to both legal and illegal immigration is now widespread among conservatives, said Cato’s David Bier, who worked as a Republican congressional staffer on immigration policy. He told NPR that when he talks to conservatives about the economic and demographic risks of closing the country’s doors to migrants, many answer with a cultural argument. “[They] would rather have a declining population of ‘true Americans’ than have an economy kept afloat by people who don’t share [their] values,” Bier said.