Should Karoline Leavitt’s family be deported? 

Standing at the podium in the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was, instead of answering questions about the Trump administration, answering questions about her own family. 

The mother of Leavitt’s nephew was detained by ICE this week. Bruna Caroline Ferreira, “a criminal illegal alien from Brazil,” allegedly overstayed a tourist visa that expired in 1999 according to the Department of Homeland Security. No doubt an embarrassing moment for the usually forthright Leavitt, it also crystallized how the shockwaves of Trump’s immigration are being felt across America. 

Now, I’m an upstanding citizen, thank you very much. I can’t say I personally know anyone who’s been caught up in an ICE raid. But as the administration expands its efforts at mass deportations over the next three years, I very well could run into a personal case like Leavitt’s. So could you – along with your friends, family, and neighbors. 

This begs the question: how will Americans respond when the idea of “mass deportations” ceases to be an abstraction, and instead comes knocking on the door?

Leavitt is the public face of the administration caught up, through no fault of her own, in a very personal scandal. While other administration officials pursue their given policies, her job is to communicate and if need be spin, those policies to the media. Smoothing over stories unpalatable to the general public – such as a beautiful young mother without a serious criminal record nabbed by ICE just before Thanksgiving – is the most important part of the job. A DHS statement on upholding the rule of law won’t change hearts and minds. 

Still, Leavitt rightly declined to comment on the incident from either a personal or professional capacity. But she must certainly have some conflicted feelings. On the one hand, Leavitt has long proven herself an ally to the president and his America First agenda. No one can doubt that she supports the overall goal of deporting criminal illegal aliens. Who knows: maybe she tipped off Tom Homan in the first place after Ferreira spurned her brother? If only we could all do that to our annoying family members. 

As deportation stories shift from abstract and absurd to the sympathetic and personal, the American taste for strict immigration enforcement could start to fall away

On the other hand, Ferreira might not quite be her family, but the situation surely has a direct impact on her family. Her nephew may lose access to his mother, leaving her brother to pick up the pieces. It’s only human to feel compassion as someone close to you struggles with hardship, but it would be unprincipled (to say nothing of career suicide) to plead for special favor. It’s easy to see how an average voter could be similarly conflicted. 

After four years of an effectively open border under the Biden administration, “mass deportations” were actually quite popular. An Ipsos poll from September 2024 showed 54% Americans supported a mass deportation plan, including even 58% of Independents. A year into Trump’s presidency, and that figure still holds. An October Harvard/Harris poll showed 56% of Americans in favor of deporting all illegal aliens, while 78% supported deporting criminal illegal aliens. 

While that effectively puts Republicans on the winning side of an 80/20 issue, it hasn’t yet led  Democrats to alter course. In just the last week, The New York Times sympathetically profiled an illegal migrant caught with the stolen identity of an American while The New Yorker lamented a murderer “disappeared to a foreign prison.” 

It’s hard to feel any sympathy reading stories like these, but it’s equally hard to read a story like Leavitt’s and not have it pull on the heartstrings. So far, however, the media has had little opportunity to show the public the latter case. But that will surely change if and when mass deportations truly begin. 

As deportation stories shift from abstract and absurd to the sympathetic and personal, the American taste for strict immigration enforcement could start to fall away. Notably, the figures have been constant over the last year; the administration isn’t convincing anyone who isn’t already convinced. This peak anti-immigration sentiment in a country generally amenable to a diverse melting pot could easily settle back down to the pre-Biden average. 

It’s easy to say we must all harden our hearts to the reality of illegal immigration, but the human heart just doesn’t work that way. We’re all more sympathetic to something that touches us personally. The left has learned this the hard way, attempting to demagogue abstract issues that don’t often hit home for the average voter. In the last few years, their propaganda has seen diminishing returns. 

The Trump administration must also learn this lesson before it’s too late. Move silent and swift on the deportations that must occur, but don’t let the public see how the sausage gets made. Just because Americans currently support mass deportations doesn’t mean they always will.