Workers on the US side, paint a line on the ground as they work on the border wall between Mexico and the US, as seen from Tijuana, Mexico, Dec. 13, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Carlos Garcia Rawlins.

A few weeks ago, I briefed several FBI and DHS officials on the status of war criminals linked to Bashar al-Assad’s former regime in Syria, some of whom are now illegally living on American soil.

While some of these Syrian officials used fraud to acquire a green card, others simply strolled across the southern border. In both kinds of circumstances, our government failed to prevent someone who should not have been in the country from entering it.

These cases of violent criminals infiltrating our borders are not simply the result of isolated, careless mistakes. Instead, they expose how deeply entrenched illegal immigration is in our society.

The Trump administration was off to a promising start reducing illegal immigration. Yet, more recent data indicates that President Trump’s initial successes at reducing illegal immigration have been undermined.

Since Trump returned to the White House, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has documented more than 100 serious crimes committed by illegal immigrants, and the problem isn’t even limited to these individual crimes.

When I asked Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), about the current numbers, he confirmed the momentum had shifted. “The illegal population could have been down 1.6 million between January 2025 and [the summer-fall of] 2025,” he told me. “But since then … the numbers are all over the place. It doesn’t look like there’s been any decline since mid-year. If you believe the numbers, there’s been a recovery, which means that maybe it didn’t decline as much as I thought it did.”

Notwithstanding violent crime rates, there are plenty of other reasons to reduce illegal immigration, as it also overburdens public services, hampers the assimilation process, and makes the rule of law meaningless for those who came to the country legally. If the United States is serious about protecting its borders and mitigating the problems caused by illegal immigration, it should learn from a country that has confronted this challenge for decades: Israel.

Claiming that American policy should reflect Israel’s isn’t new. In Adios America, Ann Coulter devoted an entire chapter to arguing that the United States should adopt Israel’s strict immigration policies. But Coulter simultaneously insinuated that Israel’s border fence ended the problem. While this point is regularly made, it’s largely fiction.

From 2006 to 2012, thousands of Africans, especially Sudanese and Eritreans, illegally entered Israel through the Sinai Peninsula. What eventually stopped these infiltrators were policies created to deter them.

“By the middle of 2012, entering through the border with Egypt went down to almost zero, while the majority of the fence was only finished in December 2012, and the last part of the fence down next to the city of Eilat was only finished in December 2013. The fence is not what blocked the people from coming in. We needed another explanation. That explanation is called the Anti-Infiltration Law,” said Yonatan Jakubowicz, the founder and executive director of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center (IIPC).

The Anti-Infiltration Law that passed in early 2012 originally stipulated that infiltrators could be held in immigration detention centers for up to three years. According to Jakubowicz, the policy had a significant deterrent effect. “Additionally, later legislation that required illegal migrants already present in Israel to stay in a semi-open center, brought upon a significant wave of voluntary return or self-deportation, even to countries like Eritrea and Sudan,” he added.

The Israeli Supreme Court repeatedly struck down the Anti-Infiltration Law, despite the addition of various amendments. Since then, the number of infiltrators entering Israel has begun to rise again. “Today, Israel does not have what you would call ‘deterring policies.’ What we’re seeing, as a result of that, is a rising number of [illegal immigrants] coming from the Jordanian border, including Sudanese,” Jakubowicz said. “Now we’re talking about dozens to hundreds a month who are entering, and the numbers are just growing.”

Israel’s experience offers a simple lesson for the Trump administration: Securing the border is only the first step. To meaningfully reduce illegal immigration, the administration must also make it difficult to remain in the country illegally. This means that the government should create conditions under which illegal immigrants have a strong incentive to leave the country, which includes going after the employers who hire them.

But Trump’s efforts at worksite enforcement have been lackluster, partly because businesses use these workers, and lobby against change. If Trump eventually overcomes his sympathy for the corporate class, there are three steps his administration could take instead of relying on a border wall. First, his administration could mandate that all American businesses utilize E-Verify, a program that allows employers to check the eligibility of workers and applicants. Second, Trump could enact stronger sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants. Third, he could make voluntary departure easier by providing financial assistance to those who agree to leave the country. The last two suggestions have already been implemented by Israel.

Since Hamas’ terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, media personalities such as Tucker Carlson have attempted to portray Israel as an enemy of Western civilization. Yet, Israel exists at the forefront of confronting two of Western civilization’s most pressing challenges: radical Islam and mass immigration. Rather than dismissing Israel, Americans should learn from and advocate for what the Jewish State has gotten right, especially when it comes to deterrence and immigration more broadly.

Richard McDaniel is an undergraduate political science student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.