The recent arrest of Palestinian activist and U.S. legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil, who played a prominent role in last year’s Columbia University protests over the war in Gaza, has prompted questions about the limits of a green card.

An economy supported by immigrants living illegally in the U.S. protects Americans. The U.S. would be unable to dodge the economic shocks and high costs that mass deportations would bring about.

As an expert on migration policy and international affairs, I have observed the evolution of this global trend: nations leverage migration policies for geopolitical ends. While migration diplomacy does work both ways, richer countries by and large have the upper hand. And Trump’s threats against Colombia –and others –are just one example of this hardball migration diplomacy.

My research at the Cato Institute on crime and terrorism committed by illegal immigrants conclusively shows that they commit less crime than native-born Americans and have murdered zero people in domestic attacks since 1975. We also fond no statistically significant relationship between the size of the immigrant population, the illegal immigrant population, or the legal immigrant population and the spread of serious communicable diseases.

A self-confessed veteran of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group arrested for crossing into the United States from Mexico appears to have been honored as a combat veteran weeks earlier by an organization established by Russian President Valdimir Putin.

As Trump moves closer to reclaiming residency at the White House on Jan. 20, the vast Texas acreage at the edge of the Rio Grande promises to become a centerpiece of the get-tough immigration policies he plans to unfurl under recently named “border czar” Tom Homan. Impoverished Starr County might be the site of a new federal deportation center.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to increase the pace of U.S. military shipbuilding. But his pledge to also clamp down on immigration could make it hard for shipyards already facing workforce shortages.

Thousands of people have been arrested under Texas’ human smuggling law. Now they face at least a decade in prison under sentencing guidelines that took effect this year.

Tren de Aragua members arrested in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin. Tren de Aragua gang members are known for violence, murder, kidnapping, extortion, bribery and human and drug trafficking.