“Sorry to all you people at the Cato Institute or wherever else—I don’t owe you an explanation for this. I just prefer this.” That was book publisher Jonathan Keeperman explaining to Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo why Keeperman’s “desire to preserve homogeneity is just fine.” The podcast clip has been viewed nearly 3 million times on X alone.

The podcast episode was entitled the “Indian Question,” and is Keeperman and Rufo’s hour-long quasi-defense of Texas Republican Bo French’s viral tweet expressing outrage at students celebrating a University of Texas football win merely because they were of Indian ethnicity. It’s worth noticing that respected figures on the political right will defend those types of tweets, but to us it’s also noteworthy that Keeperman chose the Cato Institute as his stand-in for all those who demand reasons for his views.

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During his campaign in 2016, President Trump repeatedly proposed an outright ban on Muslims entering the United States. He then claimed that this policy idea morphed into the travel ban to avoid potential constitutional problems. During his 2024 campaign, he said he would bring back an even stricter ban than the one in his first term. He has succeeded. 

Historic Cuts to Legal Immigration

Data from the State Department through February 2026 show that the Trump administration has cut legal immigration by nationals of 45 majority-Muslim countries by 96 percent since December 2024. Monthly immigrant visa issuances and permanent lawful refugee admissions fell from 21,096 in December 2024 to 808 in February 2026. 

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George Anibowei is a Dallas immigration lawyer and a naturalized US citizen who travels abroad regularly. Since October 2016, border agents have searched his cell phone without a warrant five times. During the first search, agents copied the entire contents of the device, including privileged communications with his clients. Nearly a decade later, the government still has that data.

Mr. Anibowei sued the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, challenging the agencies’ policies that let agents rummage through travelers’ devices with no warrant and, for so-called basic searches, no individualized suspicion at all. The district court denied him relief, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. Mr. Anibowei now seeks Supreme Court review. 

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The worst terrorist attack in world history occurred on September 11, 2001. Many security failures contributed to permitting the attacks to occur, including the inability of the legal immigration system to stop the 19 hijackers from receiving temporary nonimmigrant visas to travel to the United States. Fortunately, the system has improved, and vetting failures have become far less frequent after the attacks. 

In 2018, the Cato Institute published my original research documenting terrorism visa-vetting failures from 1987 to 2016. The report demonstrated for the first time that visa vetting failures became much less common in the years following 9/11—despite the US government’s even more aggressive foreign policy and far more legal immigration and travel than before 9/11. 

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Pro-natalists believe that falling birthrates are priming countries for economic collapse. This view is probably wrong, but in any case, the obvious response is expanded immigration. 

Using data from 38 OECD countries, new research finds that 

growth in native-born populations has slowed substantially, while immigration has increased significantly. … [This] immigration has been associated with stronger economic performance.

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Fox News congressional correspondent Bill Melugin stated on social media last week that “Biden released illegal alien crimes” are happening “all over the country,” but “almost nobody is being released now.” Official data, however, show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is releasing 184 immigrants per day, 41 percent of whom have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

ICE is actually releasing more immigrants with criminal convictions and pending criminal charges than during President Biden’s term. Since January 2025, ICE has released 25,712 people with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, and over 2,000 had violent criminal records. The data complicate the narrative that President Biden was less committed to preventing criminal releases than Trump. 

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In November 2025, the Trump administration began rejecting some visa applicants based on health problems, asking if applicants and their children have “disabilities, chronic medical conditions, or other special needs.” On Tuesday this week, the State Department ordered a pause on all immigrant visa appointments worldwide to better train consular officers on more restrictive guidance, enforcing these rules as well as others intended to exclude immigrants likely to use public benefits.

Although some immigrants do become disabled, this analysis finds that immigrants, legal and illegal, were 24 percent less likely to be disabled than the US-born population in 2024, and were less likely to be disabled at nearly every age regardless of immigration status. Their lower disability rate led to significantly less use of disability benefits, but even disabled immigrants draw on those benefits less than disabled US-born citizens.