There are times when the cost of trying to prove something is so much greater than the benefit that it isn’t worth the effort and time. President Trump faces such a moment now. He has to figure out whether his deployment of ICE agents to round up undocumented migrants across the country is causing too much harm than good. That action is what triggered the mass protests that are ongoing in Los Angeles and other cities.

In response to the protests, the president has federalized the California National Guard and ordered its members into the streets of Los Angeles to restore calm. About 700 Marines have also been sent to the city to join the National Guard and local law enforcement in that effort. The presence of heavily armed troops in the middle of the city, and the numerous scuffles that have broken out between some protesters and the troops, risk escalating tensions that are already extremely high.

During the presidential campaign last year, Mr. Trump repeatedly vowed that if elected president, he would shut down the southern border and deport the 11 million or so migrants who are here illegally. He effectively fulfilled the first half of that promise within a couple of months after entering office. But the second task is proving a lot harder. Some recent reports have said that the president is frustrated by the slow pace of migrant arrests and deportations, and that he is looking for ways to speed things up.

I am quite sure that when he was making those promises on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump himself did not honestly believe that he could deport 11 million people. And I don’t think his supporters believed that either. Ideally, he should have given some indication of what number of undocumented migrants he realistically thought he could get out of the country. As things stand now, it appears as though he set an impossible goal for himself and even higher expectations for his adherents, and now he thinks he must find ways to meet them, whatever the cost that entails.

It is not too late. President Trump can reset those expectations. If he does, it is unlikely that his supporters would pillory him for it. Listening to and reading about what people on the right were saying on the immigration issue, my understanding is that they were most upset by the steady stream of thousands of migrants who were coming across the border every single day. The president has managed to stem that flow with the measures he introduced, even though some of them were draconian. My view is that he should declare victory and move on to some other pressing matters. By forcing things the way he is currently doing, he risks undoing the positive work he has done on this particular issue.

President Trump often says that ICE agents are going after undocumented migrants who have committed violent crimes and should be sent out of our country. No reasonable person can disagree with that. If someone has been lucky enough to gain entry into this land of opportunity, and doesn’t have the sense to find something positive to spend their time and energy on, then they absolutely don’t deserve to be here. However, it appears that the ICE raids are not as targeted as the president claims.

There may well be a handful of undocumented migrants here and there who are violent criminals. But it is implausible that the millions who work at places such as a car wash, a hotel and a hardware store, as well as on construction sites, farms and in slaughterhouses, are anything other than honest, hardworking individuals who are important contributors to our economy. Some have lived and worked in their communities for decades.

The other night, I heard a former public official, a conservative, saying on television that one reason we need to get rid of the undocumented migrants is that they depress wages for low-income Americans. People like him don’t send their children to pick produce on farms in hundred-degree weather, or work in slaughterhouses. And, I have observed Americans long enough to know that even those on the lowest rungs of the income ladder shun those types of jobs. Instead of constantly denigrating them, we should be grateful to these undocumented but humble human beings who gladly wake up every day to go and do these essential jobs for us.

Some of the stories I’ve heard from Los Angeles this past week have been absolutely heart-wrenching. Fathers have been snatched by ICE agents from their workplaces and sent to places far away from their communities. Wives often have no idea where their husbands are. Children come home from school to hear from their mothers that their fathers have vanished and will possibly not return. A good number of the “get-them-all-out-of-our-country” MAGA hardliners are parents themselves. They should insert themselves into that harrowing picture for just one minute.

The other side of this argument is that the vast majority of the millions of undocumented migrants may well be decent human beings, but we shouldn’t reward people for breaking the law. That is a valid point. But I have two counterarguments. First, if we were in their shoes, we would most likely do the same thing. Second, the hardline approach is extremely unwise. Apart from its cruelty, we will inflict significant damage on our economy if we insist on going down that path. The southern border has been stabilized and so our communities are not being overwhelmed by the constant influx of migrants as they had been in the last few years. We should therefore refrain from cutting off our nose to spite our face.

In life, sometimes we are better off letting some things go.