As the financial and social tolls on American society that illegal aliens take daily become clearer, it seems Americans are beginning to reject the mainstream media’s attempts to garner sympathy for those who sneak into the United States.

The number of pro-illegal immigrant stories in the press appears to have increased apace with Donald Trump’s success in the polls. The Washington Post published one such article Sunday about Friendship Park, an immigration “no man’s land” between San Diego and Tijuana, where once a week U.S. citizens and resident aliens are able to meet with family members who have been deported.

The Post’s article describes Friendship Park as a depressing place where “separated immigrant families hug across a steel divide,” before detailing a number of emotional stories. The Post’s readers, however, were not happy about the publication’s emotionally-manipulative attempt to foster sympathies for illegal aliens.

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“You cannot be serious,” commented one reader to the Post. “It is an INTERNATIONAL BORDER. Don’t break the law, don’t find yourself in this situation. Pretty simple.”

Wrote another: “They are separated from their families because they want to stay illegal. Any time they want to spend time with their families, they can just go back across the border. It’s not the U.S. that makes that decision.”

Some readers were less diplomatic, having little patience for the paper’s publishing of open-borders propaganda — “What a bunch of emotional BS,” one reader said. There are over 500 comments on the story, the vast majority of them sharing the sentiment expressed above. And they’re all worth a read.

But biased stories like The Washington Post’s — which excuse the inherent law breaking of illegal immigration and pay absolutely no consideration to the costs of illegal immigrants to native-born Americans in terms of healthcare, education, the economy, and crime — are as ubiquitous in the media as are Mexican flags at anti-Trump protests.

On April 18 Rolling Stone featured an interview with Jose Antonio Vargas, an undocumented immigrant who created EmergingUS, a media outlet designed explicitly to generate sympathy for the so-called plight of those who believe themselves above immigration law.

The same day, the Huffington Post blog posted a story titled “Life Without DAPA: One Woman’s Story,” by a woman who evidently believes the fact that she misses her illegal-alien mother is a valid argument for open borders.

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On April 21, CNNMoney featured a sympathetic story about Denise Rojas, who became the first illegal alien to attend the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and on April 23, NBC News published a feature titled “Black & Undocumented: Caribbean Immigrant’s Long Fight for Citizenship.”

But using emotional manipulation to advocate mass immigration is not just the preferred strategy of liberal politicians. As LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby detailed in a report on Monday, the Obama administration is working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to award Central and South American illegal alien minors refugee status. As part of that move, Obama has even budgeted $17,613 for each minor — $2,841 more a year than the average Social Security retirement benefit.

Most Americans, like the hundreds of commentators on The Washington Post, seem to be immune to such manipulation. A rolling poll conducted by Reuters found that, as of September 2015, an average of around 55 percent of Americans believed most or all immigrants should be deported.

If Hispanics are removed from the sample, the average percentage of Americans in favor of deporting most or all immigrants jumps to over 58 percent. Over 60 percent of white Americans are in favor of deportation, the poll suggests.

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The poll also showed that an average of nearly 80 percent of Republicans and nearly 75 percent of conservatives favor deportation for some or all illegal immigrants. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that an average of nearly 40 percent of Democrats also favor deportation, according to the poll. Even among those identifying as “very liberal” and “moderately liberal,” a full third said they favored deportation.

For all Obama’s talk of DREAMers and efforts of publications like The Washington Post to tug Americans’ collective heartstrings in the direction of amnesty, the left is clearly losing the battle for open borders.