The White House is doubling down on President Trump’s signature campaign promise and escalating efforts to deport undocumented immigrants, targeting Democrat-run cities and heightening tensions with powerful liberal governors from California to New York.
A week before, fierce protests in Los Angeles sparked by aggressive detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents led to clashes, tear gassing, scattered looting and multiple vehicles being set on fire. The vast majority of attendees were peaceful, however.
To quell the protests and protect ICE agents in California, Trump called up thousands of National Guard troops over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom − referred to by Trump as “Newscum” − and has told federal agents they have his unconditional support to continue aggressive enforcement.
Trump and administration officials say they are targeting violent criminals and gang members, though Americans are also seeing vineyard workers, car-wash attendants and building contractors snatched up, in many cases by masked men and women refusing to identify themselves, ratcheting up tensions.
Polls show a majority of voters support the president’s approach: 51% of Americans approve of his handling of border security and immigration, although only 45% of voters approve of his overall job as president, according to the NBC News Decision Desk Poll, conducted with SurveyMonkey.
“The American people want our cities, schools and communities to be SAFE and FREE from illegal alien crime, conflict, and chaos,” Trump said in a social media post. “That’s why I have directed my entire administration to put every resource possible behind this effort and reverse the tide of mass destruction migration that has turned once idyllic towns into scenes of third world dystopia.”
While border crossings have dropped dramatically, videos of masked federal agents chasing people across fields or grabbing them off city streets have horrified many Americans, and liberal leaders across the country say construction sites, farms and some entire neighborhoods are falling silent as undocumented workers stay home to avoid detention.
Some critics accused Trump of causing chaos with ICE raids, then using the community response to justify even harsher measures.
Trump remains undeterred and is pushing Congress to pass a funding measure that would allow him to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, 5,000 more customs officers, and 3,000 additional Border Patrol agents.
Across the country, the impacts of Trump’s aggressive policies are adding up: coffee shops are sharing tips on how to protect workers, advocates are tracking and reporting ongoing ICE raids to warn at-risk communities, and other groups are adopting resistance tactics that include surrounding ICE agents.
In California, officials are even boosting food-bank funding to help people afraid to go grocery shopping as waves of anxiety sweep through immigrant communities. While Trump officials are targeting people living illegally in the United States, the detentions are also affecting the estimated 4.7 million households that have both legal and undocumented members, according to the nonprofit Center for Migration Studies.
“People are living in fear,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said June 17 after ICE agents arrested New York City Comptroller Brad Lander as he was escorting a defendant from immigration court.
ICE officials claimed Lander assaulted an agent, although video shows Lander appeared instead to have been manhandled by masked men as he demanded to see an arrest warrant. ICE agents have increasingly been detaining people going to court for scheduled immigration hearings, and are using a new Trump directive to detain people who would otherwise be protected from deportation.
White House officials have suggested that other elected officials opposing Trump’s immigration policies could also be arrested, and several members of Congress have recently been briefly detained or “manhandled” by federal agents, including California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat.
Some immigration experts say Trump’s approach reflects his administration’s efforts to find ways to detain and deport people as quickly as possible, often at the cost of ignoring due process.
“They’re trying everything to see what they can get away with,” said Prof. Michael Kagan, an immigration attorney and director of the immigration clinic at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. “They are being far more provocative with raids in the community and also explicitly targeting Democrats and Democratic politicians.”
Kagan said while many Trump voters backed him over his immigration enforcement plans, he believes a growing number of his supporters are concerned that enforcement has not primarily targeted violent criminals and gang members as promised.
“It definitely seems that while there’s a core of his supporters who love this, the majority of the public does not,” Kagan said.
Retired California police officer Diane Goldstein said she’s been “appalled” to see the tactics ICE agents have been using against immigrant communities and some American citizens. Goldstein was a police lieutenant in the Los Angeles area and now is executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, a nonprofit that works with communities to help reform policing.
Goldstein said the way ICE is acting risks erasing decades of hard-won bonds of trust between law enforcement and communities across the country, from the immigrants who are growing reluctant to call 911 for help to the ordinary Americans watching masked agents grab people without producing any identification or warrant. The New York City Bar Association on June 20 said letting agents obscure their identities with masks and other measures helps them evade accountability.
“They are setting local law enforcement back on their heels after we have fought for years to engage with people,” said Goldstein. “They’re not policing in a constitutionally protected manner. We are disappearing people. We are even arresting U.S. citizens and disappearing them, and that is not what we do.”
She added: “We can’t serve people unless they trust us. Having an angry community doesn’t benefit either the community or our police officers. People think it’s not going to impact them until it does.”
In a statement, the ACLU said Trump will continue to escalate his efforts unless reined in by the courts, Congress and the American public.
“We have never experienced a moment like this in our lifetimes, when our troops are being turned against our communities, acting in the service of a military police state,” the ACLU said. “These attacks are transparently about consolidating power, bringing critics to heel, and eliminating the space to fight back.”
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