It’s one of the most moving scenes in the 1974 classic, “The Godfather: Part 11”: Nine-year-old Vito Corleone and a cargo ship crammed with Italian refugees arrive at Ellis Island. They’re sitting or squatting on the deck when, suddenly, the Statue of Liberty looms over them. 

And, just as suddenly, they rise as one and look up with expectant faces at the symbol of the new country in which they will soon live.

Statue of Liberty

Today, 125 years after Vito’s cinematic arrival in New York Harbor, the United States is seen as a far less welcoming place for would-be immigrants.

A far better description of its policies toward immigration can be found in the 1989 spectacular, “Saving Private Ryan.”

It’s 1944, shortly after the D-Day landings to liberate France from Nazi rule. As a squad of American soldiers prepare to assault a building held by Germans, a loudspeaker from the enemy side blares: “The Statue of Liberty is kaput.”

In 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that more than 2.5 million illegal aliens left the United States, including about 1.9 million self-deportations and over 622,000 formal deportations.

Most of the deported came from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Cuba and Venezuela.

Since taking office as President on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has made deporting illegal aliens—and even holders of green cards—the top priority of his administration.

Donald Trump

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reported hiring over 12,000 new officers and agents. This surge, largely occurring in late 2025, more than doubled the agency’s operational workforce from approximately 10,000 to over 22,000 personnel.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed on July 4, 2025,  tripled ICE’s annual budget and provided $75 billion for massive increases in detention capacity and hiring new agents. 

ICE’s aggressive arrests of migrants and even American citizens—capped by the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota—have sparked national protests.

They also led to Democratic Senators’ demanding major reforms in how ICE operates. Among these:

• Require DHS officers to have a judicial warrant to enter private property.
• Ban ICE and immigration enforcement agents from wearing masks and other face coverings.
• Require DHS officers to display their agency, unique ID number and last name.
• Require ICE officers to wear body-cameras when interacting with the public.
• Prohibit DHS officers from stopping, questioning and searching people based on their presence at certain locations, job, spoken language and accent, or their race or ethnicity.

Trump—through his former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem—has absolutely refused.

As a result, Democratic Senators refused to fund DHS. A House-passed bill to do so failed in the Senate.

Since February 14, DHS has faced a partial government shutdown, forcing roughly 90% of DHS’s 260,000 employees to work without pay. On March 13, about 50,000 TSA workers officially missed their first full paychecks

The consequences of this include:

• Airports are experiencing massive security line backups—some reaching three hours—due to a shortage of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners.
• Disaster relief efforts through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have stalled, affecting states recently hit by severe weather. 

Ironically, ICE itself has not been affected by the shutoff of funds to DHS. Its funding comes separately from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

Those agencies which are affected include:

• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – Coordinates disaster response.
• U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) – Manages border security and customs.
• U.S. Coast Guard – Maritime safety, security and stewardship.
• Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) – Secures airports, railways, and other transportation systems. 
• Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office (CWMDO) – Works to prevent attacks using WMDs.
• U.S. Secret Service – Protects the President, various national officials and investigates financial crimes.
• Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) – Provides intelligence to identify and mitigate threats. 

All of these agencies perform tasks vital to the security of American citizens. But for Trump, the single most important of these agencies is the Secret Service.

Being forced to worry about meeting your most essential needs can easily decrease a bodyguard’s attentiveness to potential dangers.

Secret Service agent

This is not the first time that Trump has forced his bodyguards to work for free.

Secret Service agents had to work without pay through two major government shutdowns—for 35 days in 2018-19 and 43 days in 2025. Many of them had to stand in line at food banks to feed their families.

And there’s a less-personal danger facing Trump: More than 300 TSA agents have quit during the ongoing partial government shutdown as of March, 2026. Many more have called out sick, causing long lines at airports

If a terrorism incident occurs at an airport or aboard a plane—highly likely now since Trump attacked Iran on February 28—he will face the blame for it.

And with Republicans desperate to retain seats in Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, this could prove politically fatal.

During World War 11, Adolf Hitler prioritized the transportation of Jews and other prisoners to extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, often diverting munitions-carrying trains from the war effort to feeding victims into the Holocaust.

In the name of his racist effort to “cleanse” the United States of nonwhites, Donald Trump is putting his regime—and the lives of Americans—at deadly risk.