It is not supposed to "work" - whatever that means. It is supposed to terrorize one group of working people and divide and conquer the working class in general.
Mass extra-legal arrests, detention camps, and deportation - all of which has already been happening - is far, far more feasible than humane immigration reform ever has been in the US.
Dismantle, Don’t Expand: The 1996 Immigration Laws
The last major revisions to U.S. immigration laws were made in 1996 under President Clinton. Shorthanded as the “‘96 Laws,” the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) radically remade immigration enforcement to adopt criminal law’s harshest elements—including mass incarceration, discriminatory policing, and unforgiving sentencing—and exposed millions of longtime residents to forced deportation.
Since the passage of the ‘96 Laws, the federal government has diverted tens of billions of dollars to enforce and expand this abusive immigration framework. In this time, the U.S. has forcibly removed close to 5 million immigrants from the country—more than double the number of people it deported in the 110 years prior—establishing itself as home to the largest deportation system in the world.
While administrations have changed, the constant result has been the breaking apart of hundreds of thousands of families, weakening of local economies and communities, and widening of racial inequalities.
https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/dismantle-1996/
Operation Wetback
In 1951 President Truman’s Commission on Migratory Labor released a report blaming low wages in the Southwest and social ills on illegal immigration: “The magnitude … has reached entirely new levels in the past 7 years.… In its newly achieved proportions, it is virtually an invasion,” the report said. After touring Southern California in August 1953 to assess the impact of illegal immigration, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, Jr., pushed Congress to enact sanctions against employers of undocumented workers and to confiscate the vehicles that were used to bring them to the United States.While neither proposal became law, the administration moved forward on plans for a deportation operation. On June 9, 1954, INS Commissioner General Joseph Swing announced the commencement of “Operation Wetback.”The first phase of the operation began in California and Arizona. Its effectiveness depended on publicity as well as manpower. Extensive media coverage that often exaggerated the strength of the Border Patrol, as well as targeted displays of strength, gave the impression of a greater force. In many regions, this strategy convinced thousands who had entered the U.S. illegally to repatriate voluntarily. In Texas, for example, more than 63,000 individuals returned to Mexico of their own volition; U.S. officials detained an additional 42,000 persons in July 1954. An INS report later indicated that the agency apprehended nearly 1.1 million individuals. The INS operation won at least tacit support from several key groups; the Mexican government, labor groups, and even Mexican-American civil rights groups acknowledged the labor problem, but they withheld extensive criticism. While the raids disrupted the growing seasons in California and Arizona, the government pacified farm owners with promises of additional bracero labor. Though the program was touted as a success, its effects were short-lived; illegal entry exploded again after the United States terminated the Bracero Program in 1964.
https://immigrationhistory.org/item/operation-wetback/
Sixty years ago this May, the U.S. Border Patrol enacted “Operation Wetback,” a campaign to deport Mexican workers who were in the country illegally. The program succeeded in rounding up over 1 million people, most of them men. Just two years before Operation Wetback, the Border Patrol had deported half as many people. This new policy marked the beginning of modern deportation raids and the militarization of the border that we are familiar with today.
https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/may-2014-immigrant-deportations-today-and-continuing-legacy-operation-wetback
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