When I moved to the United States, I made a promise: if ever faced with no legal path forward, I would leave. I owed that to myself and to the United States. True to my word, it took me more than nine years to finally receive my green card. The journey was exhausting, expensive, and fraught with difficulties.

But I am white, European, and speak English with an accent, so, to many, my struggle doesn’t matter. I am still labelled privileged. As one liberal American told me, I ‘should get the f*** out of America.’ That was just one of thousands of comments from people who felt my support for Trump’s immigration policy didn’t fit their narrative. Most Americans, in truth, have little understanding of their own legal system, let alone the distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants or between illegal entrants and asylum seekers. Among liberals, the common denominator is a visceral distaste for Trump.

So far, Trump has deported hundreds of thousands of people (DHS claims over 675,000 deportations/removals) in his first year back in office. The majority are hardened criminals with records, though some, admittedly, are harmless individuals simply seeking a better life. Yes, there are good and decent people who have been deported, and knowing a Hungarian woman among the deportees, I can attest that the conditions are not necessarily friendly.

Still, in today’s climate, where phrases like ‘nobody is illegal on stolen land’ or where ‘no white person can face hardship’ (as that is a right offered only to—in this case—Latin American immigrants), along with the physical abuse ICE agents are dealing with, it is hard to maintain normalcy. The truth is: anyone who entered the USA illegally, or overstayed a visa, is breaching the legal system of a sovereign country. That fact cannot be ignored.

‘Anyone who entered the USA illegally, or overstayed a visa, is breaching the legal system of a sovereign country’

America is not a charity organization. While it was indeed built on immigrants, those immigrants were legal; they waited years for their papers, just as we all do even today. And for the sake of sanity, I won’t entertain the premise that the whole USA is illegal and only the indigenous inhabitants are the legal ones. That goes beyond contemporary moral and legal sanity at this point.

Obama deported over 3 million people during his presidency (formal removals totaled around 3.1 million across his terms, per DHS and Migration Policy Institute data). The current head of ICE, Tom Homan, was given a Presidential Rank Award for that work under Obama. Now, a few years later, the very same person is verbally lynched each day for the very same work. What changed?

The political denomination of the President.

The pure sight of Trump’s name makes liberals go nuts and act out, like at the Grammys, where, the 24-year-old Billie Eilish, among others, had to politicize the arts and ended her speech with the now often heard ‘f*** ICE’. The irony is heavy here. She lives in a $6 million Malibu beach mansion protected by thick walls and security systems. Does that sound a little too pretentious? That someone so scared of people would argue that illegals should have a place in the country and that ‘nobody is illegal on stolen land’?

The hypocrisy continues in the USA, so much so that kindergarten and school teachers are taking underage, impressionable students onto the streets to protest, at a minimum making them draw up signs emphasizing how ICE is racist.

Yet the very same educators were largely silent when Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Texan girl, was sexually assaulted and murdered by two Venezuelan men who had entered the US illegally. Or when Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, was killed by José Antonio Ibarra, who entered the country illegally in 2022. Or when Mollie Tibbetts, a college student in Iowa, was murdered in 2018 by an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Sadly, these are not isolated incidents, the list goes on.

How does this all connect to our old continent, Europe?

What starts in the USA rarely stops there. Trends, whether good or bad, eventually land on our continent as well. A few days ago, in Milan, multiple rallies were held ahead of and during the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, opening with hundreds chanting slogans, blowing whistles, and displaying banners like ‘ICE OUT’, as if ICE had any jurisdiction in Europe or as if any European citizen had any right to cast a vote on America's domestic policies. The performative crowd was at it again: you could see these protests in Berlin, Paris, and in various cities in Ireland and the United Kingdom. After all, there are not several thousand dead in Iran by an authoritarian regime to protest, if anything. But somehow, this crowd always seems to find some twisted moral superiority game to cheer for the standout guilty party. See how European cities were, and still are, loud with anti-Israel rallies where Hamas and Hezbollah flags are visibly present. It does not seem to matter that both are designated terrorist groups by the EU itself.

The question then comes to mind: if European countries continue what Denmark, Poland, and Hungary have already started, taking on even stricter policies against illegal immigration, how will Europe's liberals react? Would they start going against their governments, border patrols, and follow the nonsense of their American counterparts?

Sadly, the answer seems pretty evident. It's been over 15 years since Europe started to face the heavy burden of illegal migrants. At first, under the pretence that we need to be good humans, many accepted our fate, but Hungary and Poland were among the first to ring the bell on this matter. I vividly remember when the tsunami of migrants passed through Hungary. They occupied our train stations, marched through our highways, threw back the food they were given, claiming it was not halal, and they could not eat it. It was surreal. They harassed our women and the elderly. And, as in the USA, it should come without a disclaimer that there were, and are, decent, good asylum seekers who genuinely want to better their lives. However, as European, Hungarian, or American citizens, we need to see the trends and tendencies.

Those feel very clear to me. According to Italy's 2025 Interior Ministry data:

• Foreign nationals accounted for 44 per cent of all sexual-violence arrests, despite being around 9 per cent of the population.
• In gang rape cases, about 50 per cent of suspects were foreign nationals; among younger suspects (14–34), 59 per cent were foreign-born.
• One analysis of 2024 conviction data showed foreign nationals made up roughly 43 per cent of sexual offence arrests. 

Germany's 2023 police crime statistics showed that around 41 per cent of suspects nationwide were not German citizens (including violent crimes and sexual assaults). This rose to 41.8 per cent in 2024, according to BKA data.

Published figures from French Interior Ministry data suggested that in public transport environments, foreign nationals accounted for around 69 per cent of violent robberies, assaults, and sexual assaults in the Île-de-France region.

I realize these are uncomfortable truths. The moment someone raises them, they risk being labelled racist. But how far can we move the goalposts before reality becomes undeniable? 

‘Being humane and compassionate does not mean adapting our lifestyles to one in which women are afraid to leave their homes after dark’

As Henry Kissinger said, without order, justice is impossible; the world is dangerous and imperfect, best managed by realism rather than moral enthusiasm. Trump receives backlash in part because of his name and because he unapologetically says: ‘America first’. Is what he is doing illegal? No. Anyone who has ever held a US visa knows the fine print: you are a guest, and your stay is at the country’s discretion. Could procedures be more humane? Certainly—even if some reports of ‘inhuman treatment’ are exaggerated by political opponents.

Europe is not so different. Hungary has paid a steep price for refusing to accept migrants that the EU, in its confusion, seeks to force upon it. Poland faces constant warnings. Denmark now has some of the strictest migration policies in Europe, yet faces little criticism, having negotiated its own path upon joining the EU (see: Justice and Home Affairs opt-out).

The immigration issue poses immeasurable challenges to our continent—not only financial and demographic, but also cultural. We must be honest: many migrants in Europe have brought with them cultural norms that are not compatible with Western societies. The treatment of women is one clear example.

While the USA faces gangs, drugs, and child trafficking as major challenges linked to migration from South America, Europe must act before its current warning signs harden into reality. Being humane and compassionate does not mean adapting our lifestyles to one in which women are afraid to leave their homes after dark. The courage to speak uncomfortable truths is the first step in protecting our future—for conservatives, liberals, and every citizen who believes Europe is worth defending.

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