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While the Supreme Court dealt President Trump a setback Tuesday by rejecting his bid to end birthright citizenship, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responding with a show of force that should send a clear message to anyone in this country illegally. According to figures obtained by Fox News Digital, ICE has made more than 10,000 arrests in just the last five days—a staggering pace that demonstrates the administration’s commitment to enforcing immigration law regardless of judicial obstacles.
The high court’s ruling upheld the long-standing interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that grants automatic citizenship to children born on U.S. soil, even when their parents are in the country illegally. The decision cited the amendment’s citizenship clause as the constitutional basis for maintaining the status quo. For immigration hawks who had hoped to see an end to the practice of “birth tourism” and the magnet effect it creates for illegal entry, the ruling was undoubtedly disappointing.
But if the courts won’t let Trump fix the incentives that draw people here illegally, his administration appears determined to ramp up the consequences. A source familiar with ICE operations confirmed the agency is currently surging enforcement activities using funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill, which nears its one-year anniversary since passage. The message is unmistakable: come here illegally, and you will be found, detained, and deported.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin didn’t mince words in his response to the Supreme Court decision, calling the ruling “dead wrong” and highlighting the national security risks posed by birth tourism, particularly from China. He’s not wrong to be concerned. The practice of foreign nationals timing their pregnancies to secure U.S. citizenship for their children is a well-documented phenomenon that exploits a constitutional provision written to ensure citizenship for freed slaves—not to create a backdoor immigration system for the world’s wealthy.
The Trump administration has reaffirmed that all illegal immigrants remain eligible for deportation, with violent criminals being prioritized. This dual approach—aggressive enforcement against those already here while continuing to push for systemic reforms like ending birthright citizenship—represents the most serious attempt to restore order to our immigration system in decades. The fact that ICE can arrest 10,000 people in five days while the administration simultaneously fights legal battles over birthright citizenship shows just how committed they are to the issue.
Critics will call this cruel. They’ll trot out the usual sob stories and claim that enforcing immigration law tears families apart. But what’s truly cruel is allowing a broken system to persist year after year, encouraging more people to make dangerous journeys to the border, and creating a permanent underclass of people living in the shadows. The compassionate response to illegal immigration isn’t amnesty and open borders—it’s enforcing the law so consistently that the incentives to break it disappear.
The Supreme Court may have tied one hand behind the administration’s back on birthright citizenship, but ICE is proving that there’s still plenty that can be done with the other. Ten thousand arrests in five days is not business as usual—it’s a statement of intent. The Trump administration is making it clear that they will use every tool at their disposal to restore sovereignty and security to America’s borders, regardless of what obstacles the judiciary throws in their path. For a nation that has watched its immigration system be systematically dismantled over decades, that commitment is welcome news indeed.
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