By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
America faces real enemies. Iran has demonstrated that it can plan lethal operations against Americans at home and abroad. China, Russia, and North Korea continue to develop military, cyber, intelligence, and influence capabilities aimed at reducing American power and freedom of action. The intelligence community warns that these adversaries increasingly use deniable methods below the level of open war: sabotage, coercion, cyberattack, assassination, proxy violence, and influence operations. Migration itself has become a geopolitical pressure point that hostile actors and criminal networks can exploit.
That is precisely why we should be alarmed when our own government gives them gifts.
This is not an argument against border security. America has a right—and a duty—to control its borders, remove people who pose genuine threats, and dismantle cartels, traffickers, terrorist networks, and foreign intelligence operations. But national security is more than counting arrests, detentions, and deportations. It requires asking what happens next.
What does Iran see when people are detained, publicly humiliated, abruptly separated from children, or sent to countries where they have no family, language, legal status, employment, or future? What do China and Russia see when Americans are divided into categories of suspicion and communities lose trust in schools, courts, hospitals, and police? What does North Korea see when a distracted America is fighting itself while hostile actors look for cyber access, money, leverage, and political disorder?
They see opportunities.
Not every deported person will become angry. Not every angry person will become violent. Most will not. That is not the point. Intelligence professionals do not wait until every vulnerable person becomes an operative. They identify conditions that hostile governments, cartels, traffickers, and extremists can exploit: isolation, humiliation, debt, fear, anger, lack of options, weak institutions, and broken trust.
The question is not whether an immigrant is dangerous because of a passport, a surname, religion, or immigration status. The question is whether an individual has been coerced, recruited, financed, directed, or connected to a criminal, terrorist, or foreign intelligence network. Real security follows money, communications, access, behavior, and credible evidence. It does not settle for broad labels.
Our adversaries understand this better than many of our politicians do. Federal agencies have warned that Russia, Iran, and China attempt to exacerbate divisions in American society for their own benefit. Iran has used cyber theft and influence activity to sow discord and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions. Russian government-linked influence campaigns have used fake online personas and websites to manipulate audiences. China pursues long-term cyber access and influence operations to advance its strategic interests.
They do not need to invent every grievance. They need only amplify the grievances we create ourselves.
That includes language. When American officials speak as though immigrants are naturally criminals or entire communities are inherently suspect, they supply our competitors with ready-made propaganda. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea can quote the speech, clip the video, remove the context, translate it, and distribute it worldwide. They can say: America lectures the world about human rights and law yet practices collective blame and treats human beings as disposable.
We should not make their work so easy.
The Administration’s expanding use of third-country deportations deserves scrutiny. CBS News, citing internal U.S. government documents, reported that over a 10-day period the United States transferred more than 100 deportees from countries including Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Nepal, Turkey, and Venezuela to eight African nations. None was from the country to which he or she was sent. Such transfers may satisfy a short-term political objective. But a responsible government should assess whether transfer to an unfamiliar country leaves people isolated, desperate, and more vulnerable to exploitation by criminal groups, traffickers, hostile services, or extremist recruiters.
That is not a prediction of violence. It is a demand for competent risk assessment. The issue is not presumed guilt. It is whether government policy creates exploitable vulnerabilities without measuring the risk.
Congress should require a public, interagency assessment before and after third-country removals. DHS, the State Department, and the intelligence community should identify the destination, the legal and practical protections available, the person’s ability to reach family or return home, and any foreseeable risk of trafficking, cartel coercion, hostile intelligence recruitment, or extremist exploitation. A government that says national security comes first should be willing to measure the security consequences of its own actions.
Strong countries do not confuse cruelty with strength. They do not confuse immigration status with intelligence. They pursue genuine criminals and hostile operatives with precision. They protect witnesses and victims. They preserve community cooperation with law enforcement. They treat allies as force multipliers. And they understand that fairness, due process, disciplined language, and basic human decency are not luxuries. They are national security assets.
America’s enemies do not need us to surrender. They need us distracted, divided, distrustful, and reckless enough to create vulnerabilities they can exploit.
We should stop giving Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea gifts. It is time for Congress to step up.
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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel, federal civil servant and consultant who writes on civic education. He lives in Fredericksburg.
