Republicans’ prospects in the coming midterms and in 2028 depend on whether the party delivers on the core promises of President Trump’s 2024 mandate. Analysts can debate which element of that mandate carries the most weight — taming inflation, avoiding foreign entanglements, or restoring American manufacturing — but one commitment stands out for its clarity and its political power. It sits at No. 2 on agenda 47: “Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.”Promise No. 1 — sealing the border — is already well underway. That makes mass deportation the decisive test of the coalition that put Trump back in office.Voters did not support a symbolic crackdown on illegal immigration. They supported a measurable, large-scale operation.Voters who formed this coalition expect results, not excuses. If they sense drift or retreat, enthusiasm collapses. And once that energy collapses, the old Republican apparatus regains its opening to steer the party back toward a pre-Trump agenda — even if that shift results in losing Congress or the White House in 2028.A party cannot hold a coalition together if it fails to deliver on the promises that built it.The Eisenhower standardTrump set a high bar for himself when he compared his plan to the 1954 Eisenhower operation. He did that because the illegal immigration crisis has reached historic levels, and because voters, in poll after poll, signaled support for mass deportation on a scale few would have imagined a decade ago. They reached a simple conclusion: The country has been pushed past its limit.As 2025 closes, however, the numbers fall short of expectations. Even the administration’s most generous internal projections place this year’s removals around 600,000. That figure includes categories beyond the Immigration and Customs Enforcement removals most Americans associate with deportation. The true ICE number will be lower.But even accepting the 600,000 estimate, the figure amounts to only 4.2% of the conservative estimate of 14 million illegal immigrants in the country — or 2.9% of Trump’s own 21 million estimate. No one knows the exact number, but everyone can see this: The removals remain far below the mandate.The 1954 comparison underscores the gap. Eisenhower’s operation removed or induced the departure of roughly one million illegal immigrants out of an estimated two to five million — roughly 30% using a middle-range estimate. Today’s effort hasn’t come close to those numbers. We’re not even in the same hemisphere.Funding must move nowThe Trump administration faces obstacles Eisenhower never did: a legal system engineered to delay deportations indefinitely; an activist judiciary hostile to enforcement; state and local officials who obstruct federal immigration law; and a political climate in which ICE agents face sustained hostility and, in some cases, violence. The environment is different.But meaningful action remains possible.The administration should begin by pushing the $45 billion allocated to ICE through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into immediate, strategic deployment. That requires industrial-size detention infrastructure, not scattered partnerships with small facilities dressed up with branded names. A mass deportation program demands a foundation capable of sustaining it.The second step carries political risk: rejecting the narrowing of “mass deportation” to criminal illegal immigrants alone. That redefinition cannot stand. With only about 500,000 criminal illegal immigrants in the country, focusing exclusively on that group guarantees a token enforcement effort, not a mass removal program.Voters did not support a symbolic crackdown. They supported a measurable, large-scale operation.RELATED: Judges break the law to stop Trump from enforcing it Photo by Scott Olson/Getty ImagesNo more PR stuntsQuantity requires worksite enforcement — the same strategy that drove the 1954 operation. Concentrating enforcement where illegal immigrants gather in large numbers is the only credible way to meet the promise. Anything less becomes a public-relations exercise.Political and corporate interests will fight tooth and nail to stymie the effort. They prefer an enforcement regime that preserves cheap labor, avoids political controversy, and allows them to claim credit for supporting “border security” without bearing any of the cost.But the country needs a policy that matches the scale of the problem, not a performance of seriousness designed to placate donors and editorial boards.Republicans must treat this mandate as a matter of political survival. If they fail to meet it, they risk losing the very coalition that returned Trump to office. The result is predictable: an establishment revival inside the GOP and a collapse of populist momentum heading into 2028.Voters asked for decisive action. They asked for measurable progress. They asked for a departure from the decades of drift that allowed the crisis to grow. Now they expect the administration to deliver.