Media coverage of illegal immigration serves primarily to obfuscate and distract from what should be the most important question: How many illegal aliens live in America, and what do they cost us? Instead, the media manipulates our emotions with fantastic descriptions of children in cages, the terrors of the Darien Gap and Alligator Alcatraz, and the tragedy of the deportation of virtuous “undocumenteds,” who upon further investigation often turn out to be MS-13 gangsters or child molesters. 

Last year, the Pew Research Center estimated that America’s total illegal population actually declined to 10 million from 12 million between 2005 and 2019. Then it surged during Biden’s presidency, hitting 14 million by 2023, the last year for which data was available. On the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly asserted that the total number of illegal aliens had reached 20 million, and each time the media tried to “fact check” him with Pew’s estimates, even though Pew’s report admits it doesn’t have all the data for Biden’s presidency, and the data they do have confirmed a hockey-stick like upward surge in illegal immigrants between 2021 and 2023.

Even moderate elements of the conservative movement have long been aware of the media’s duplicitous tendencies. Back in 2012, Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, ranked as a “moderate Republican” by Ballotpedia, attacked the media’s coverage of illegal immigration, rightly pointing out how they obscure the difference between legal and illegal immigrants. The media doesn’t need to ignore the immigration problem, nor does coverage of it need to be directly censored. Instead, it prioritizes the struggles of sympathetic illegal immigrants and highlights purported enforcement overreaches. Meanwhile, the immigration court system prevents or reverses the administration’s enforcement of immigration laws.

Ultimately, stopping illegal immigration and deporting those who violate our laws is a unifying issue for the right. The Immigration Accountability Project in March polled 2,000 people who voted for Trump in 2024, and 87 percent said they support his mass deportation agenda. Seventy-four percent said they would be more likely to vote for Republicans in the midterms if Trump succeeds in his stated goal of deporting 1 million illegals this year. Clearly, illegal immigration energizes the Republican base.

Democrats know how important immigration is, too. While they have strategically retreated from unpopular woke issues like DEI, transgenderism, defunding the police, and many other excesses of the Biden years, they are doubling down on immigration. California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer threatened to arrest every ICE agent in the state upon taking office. Democrats in Congress have defunded vital DHS programs just to slow ICE down. 

Illegal immigration is a true wedge issue. The Democrats remain committed to open borders and periodic amnesty, while the Republicans want a border wall and mass deportations. The two sides have radically different views on what is good for the country.

It should be possible to determine the right course empirically. In 2024, Texas and Florida began tallying the costs imposed on hospitals in their states by illegals. They used the simplest method imaginable; they just asked patients about their immigration status. In 2024, illegal aliens cost Florida hospitals $659 million. In 2025, they cost Texas more than $1 billion. We have every reason to suspect similar costs nationwide, with billions of dollars drained from social service budgets. Americans bear these costs through higher taxes, longer wait times, and inferior medical care. The more every government-funded, operated, or subsidized service does for illegal aliens, the less it does for Americans.

Even the stories about crimes committed by illegal immigrants that draw the most eyeballs—the gruesome murders, assaults, rapes, and kidnappings—distract from the everyday costs of having millions of people living in our country who take far more from the common good than they contribute to it.

In the absence of fair reporting on the real costs of illegal immigration, the media relies on misleading statistics. In February, the libertarian, pro-immigration Cato Institute published a study, “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023.” In it, Cato blithely asserts that illegals have paid more in taxes than they have received in benefits over the last 20 years and that “given that even low-skilled noncitizens are fiscally beneficial, illegal immigrants likely are as well.” Even if these statistics are accurate, they are misleading, as they do not capture the negative externalities of illegal immigration and its effect on the quality of life for American citizens. 

It is wishful thinking to assume that the mainstream media will change its ways and begin searching out stories on the real cost of illegal immigration, let alone try to produce a true count of the number of resident illegals. Citizen journalists like Nick Shirley have shown how a motivated individual with a camera can counter this soft censorship. Basic accountability, mandated by executive order for Texas and Florida hospitals, is another effective tool. These can be boosted by the pipeline of conservative websites, magazines, social media, podcasts, and television.

The battle over illegal immigration is still in its early stages. We cannot allow the mainstream media to control the narrative; we need to defeat soft censorship and expose all Americans to the true stakes. ◆