President Trump’s pledge to prioritize the deportation of the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal aliens was a strategic error that undermined a foundational American principle, according to a new commentary published in American Thinker.
Writing for the outlet, Susan Quinn argues that the promise — however politically understandable — effectively conceded that some people living in the country illegally deserve leniency for being, in her framing, “nice.” That concession, she contends, breaks a core American compact: no one is above the law.
A Promise That Created a Tangle
According to Quinn, the trouble began almost immediately. When ICE first apprehends someone in the country illegally, the agency has no way of knowing whether that person committed crimes in the United States or how serious those crimes might be. The infrastructure for sorting the dangerous from the merely unlawful simply wasn’t there.
The Department of Homeland Security, she notes, has also struggled with its own risk-measurement tools. Each detainee is supposed to be assigned a “threat level,” but Quinn cites figures showing the system is falling short: 84 percent of detained individuals were not assigned a threat level at all. Roughly 7 percent of the approximately 57,000 people in detention — about 1,000 people — received a threat level of 1, the most dangerous classification.
Quinn acknowledges that 1,000 may not sound like a daunting figure in a nation of hundreds of millions. But she points out a further blind spot: the government also doesn’t know how many of these individuals committed crimes in their countries of origin. She notes reporting that Venezuela released prison inmates in recent years, though the numbers have not been available.
“Those are illegals that I don’t want wandering in my neighborhood,” she writes.
The Political Fallout of Confusion
The commentary argues that this confusion over who is being targeted has had a predictable consequence: a growing share of the American public is beginning to doubt whether mass removals are the right course at all.
Quinn lays out the sympathetic case that skeptics make. Many people living in the country illegally have been here for years. Some have jobs. Some are raising families. A portion pay taxes. If they contribute to society and the economy, why should they be punished?
Her answer is a sustained appeal to the rule of law. She writes that the law requires every person — regardless of position or status — to follow the same rules. That premise, she insists, does not permit exceptions for the sympathetic.
Making excuses for those who ignored the legal immigration system, she argues, sets a disastrous standard. If breaking the law to enroll children in schools, draw on welfare benefits, or obtain hospital care carries no consequence, then disrespect for the country’s laws is being rewarded rather than checked.
Quinn allows that the desire for a better life is understandable. But she draws a line at achieving it “on the backs of American citizens.” A legal immigration system exists, she notes, and millions have chosen to bypass it.
Letting such individuals stay, in her view, amounts to abetting the criminal acts of those who chose to enter illegally.
A Call for Trump to Retract the Promise
The piece then turns directly to the president. Quinn urges Trump to retract his original promise to deport only the worst offenders, arguing he has good reason to do so. The alternative, she warns, is that he ignores the gap between promise and practice and continues to anger voters who see the commitment going unfulfilled.
“Eventually, we will face the consequences of not making the difficult decisions to protect our borders and follow a sound immigration policy,” she writes.
The commentary closes with a broader note about political discourse, arguing that the ability to speak freely is more crucial now than ever to the republic. The outlet also appended a fundraising appeal asking readers who find its content valuable to donate in support of its staff and mission.
It is worth noting what the argument does and does not claim. Quinn is not asserting that most deportees are dangerous criminals; her own cited figure suggests the most dangerous category is a small minority of those detained. Her objection is procedural and philosophical rather than empirical — she argues the “worst first” framing invited the public to weigh the worthiness of individual immigrants, an exercise she believes the rule of law should foreclose.
Whether that framing was indeed a political miscalculation is, of course, a matter of interpretation. But the commentary offers a glimpse into a tension running through the enforcement debate: a promise designed to reassure moderates may, in practice, invite the very debates about sympathy and deservingness that its authors hoped to avoid.
The Broader Immigration Debate
Quinn’s argument sits within a long-running dispute over how enforcement priorities should be set and communicated. Prioritizing dangerous offenders is a common selling point for deportation programs because it addresses the most concrete public-safety concerns. Yet as Quinn’s piece illustrates, the gap between a priority and an absolute limit can become a political liability.
The numbers she cites underline the operational challenge. A threat-level system that leaves the vast majority of detainees unclassified offers little guidance for triage. Without reliable criminal-history data from other countries, even the classified cases rest on incomplete information.
For Quinn, that uncertainty is not an argument for restraint but for consistency. If the system cannot reliably distinguish the dangerous from the merely undocumented, she suggests, the safer course is to treat the violation of immigration law itself as the operative standard rather than attempting the impossible task of sorting good intentions from bad.
Critics of that view would counter that blanket enforcement sweeps up long-settled residents and families whose ties to their communities are precisely what makes removal so disruptive. Quinn anticipates that objection and rejects it, but she does so on principle rather than by minimizing its human cost.
What remains to be seen is whether the argument gains traction. Quinn’s closing appeal to Trump suggests she believes the window for a course correction is still open — and that the costs of waiting will only grow.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/trump-s-promise-to-remove-criminal-illegal-aliens-first-was-a-big-mistake/