The administration’s escalating mass deportation agenda is making our nation weaker, poorer and less safe
Since late January, federal agents have been violating homes, businesses, public parks, airports, medical facilities, school drop-offs, day care facilities, and even church grounds in order to kidnap our neighbors. And, the administration has been lying to the American public in the process, claiming that its masked mass deportation agents have been targeting the so-called “the worst of the worst.” All you have to do is look at who’s been swept up.
Some, like college student Any Lucía López Belloza, have been deported with breathtaking speed. The 19-year-old was boarding a flight at Boston’s Logan airport to surprise her family for the Thanksgiving holiday when she was “dragged out of the airport,” her attorney said. Others, like undocumented mom Jeanette Vizguerra, have been languishing in detention for months with no end in sight. The immigrant rights activist is among the record 65,135 individuals currently in ICE detention. Of these individuals, nearly 74% have no criminal conviction. In fact, non-criminal detainees arrested by ICE have “surged by 2,000% under Trump,” as CBS News reported last month.
But López Belloza and Vizguerra are just two examples of the unleashed sweeping abuses of power that are reaching deep into everyday American life. Here are 12 more examples.
U.S. CITIZENS TARGETED: American citizens including children and seniors have been targeted under Trump’s mass deportation dragnet, with some individuals detained for days and even weeks. In June, Cary López Alvarado went into labor prematurely when she was violently handcuffed after asking agents for a warrant. Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes was arrested when she also demanded agents who were pursuing a constituent at a local hospital to show her a warrant. In Arizona, agents racially profiled 18-year-old construction worker Fernando Vazquez and then dumped him a half-mile away from his worksite after he told them he was born in the U.S. “They basically just kidnapped me,” he said. Again in Arizona, Native American tribal member Leticia Jacobo was nearly deported due to a “clerical error” even though she had her tribal identification with her. Elaine Miles, another Native American tribal member and actor known for roles in “Northern Exposure” and “The Last of Us,” was also detained and accused of faking her documents.
U.S. MILITARY VETERANS ATTACKED: Service members who have worn a uniform and served our nation with distinction have also been targeted regardless of legal immigration status. Disabled veteran and American citizen George Retes was just trying to drive to work when he was brutally arrested during an ICE raid at a California farm in July. “I clearly identified myself as a U.S. citizen,” he said. They ignored him and kept him detained for three days. Sae Joon Park, a green card-holder and recipient of a Purple Heart for injuries he sustained while deployed in Panama, was forced to self-deport to a country he hadn’t considered his home for decades. 70-year-old air force veteran Dana Briggs was charged with assault even though agents knocked him over at an ICE protest.
FAMILIES SEPARATED – AGAIN: The administration is traumatizing American children of all ages, with one report identifying “more than 100 US citizen children, from newborns to teenagers, who have been left stranded without parents because of immigration actions this year.” Among them are a number of U.S. citizen children who’ve lost their only living parent following an ICE arrest. “In some cases, the children themselves are asking for financial support to help pay for food, rent and utility bills,” CNN reported. “Teenagers describe being left on their own with younger siblings, and recent high school graduates say they have dropped out of college and returned home in the hopes of keeping their siblings housed, fed and out of the care of strangers.”
SCHOOL SAFETY LOST: Once considered spaces protected from armed immigration agents, schools are now being targeted as part of the Project 2025 agenda. Students are being stopped by ICE during school hours while daycare workers are being detained in front of terrified toddlers, disrupting learning environments that are supposed to be safe. 17-year-old high school student Christian Jimenez tried to tell the agents who stopped him that he was an American citizen. “Get out of the car,” the agent responded. “I don’t care.” Meanwhile, daycare worker Diana Santillana Galeano tried to tell agents that she had papers but was similarly ignored and dragged out of her workplace. “At one point, the agents appeared to slam her face against the daycare’s glass doors before pinning her against a parked car and handcuffing her,” The Guardian reported. A judge later ruled her arrest unlawful, as The Guardian noted.
RELIGIOUS SPACES NO LONGER SACRED: In another Project 2025 demand, the administration abandoned long-standing policies that largely protected houses of worship and their congregants from immigration raids. “The arrival of masked federal agents at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday sent some worshippers fleeing into the woods while children sobbed inside,” The New Republic reported following Border Patrol’s invasion of the area last month. The administration’s agenda has had a devastating effect on churchgoers in other areas that have been an epicenter of the administration’s raids. In D.C., one faith leader said attendance has fallen 20%. In L.A., another faith leader said attendance has fallen as much as 70% following nearby enforcement actions.
HOSPITALS PATROLLED: Hospitals are now being stalked by mass deportation agents, once again under a Project 2025 demand. In May, Border Patrol staked themselves outside a hospital room in order to quickly deport a recently-arrived migrant mother who was giving birth and had spent two days wandering the harsh Arizona desert. “Immediately after giving birth, the young woman learned she would be deported and was told she would have to decide between abandoning her newborn daughter or taking her with her,” El País reported at the time. Intense pressure from local officials and the surrounding community – including protests outside the hospital – ultimately forced the administration to allow the new mother to pursue a pathway to remain in the U.S.
WORKPLACES RAIDED: Immigration operations are devastating workplaces nationwide, including at a Newark seafood market, a Georgia Hyundai manufacturing site, and an Omaha meat production plant. Even employers who followed hiring rules are watching their operations collapse. “Owyhee Produce, a third-generation agricultural business in Idaho, is now facing worker shortages in the wake of the Trump administration’s increasing deportation raids,” the AP reported in October. That same month, Trump’s own Labor Department admitted that its raids are hurting the food supply, conceding that farms “will imminently face severe challenges accessing a sufficient and legal supply of labor to sustain current food production levels.” This resulting pain will hit working families right in the wallet. “Without prompt action, agricultural employers will face severe labor shortages, resulting in disruption to food production, higher prices, and reduced access for U.S. consumers, particularly to fresh fruit and vegetables,” the Labor Department said.
LOCAL ECONOMIES CRIPPLED: Mass deportation raids are decimating local economies, as customers are too frightened to even walk the streets in some once-vibrant, small-business filled communities. Business owners report empty aisles, lost revenue, and workers too scared to show up – a cascading crisis that threatens to break entire local economies. Following Border Patrol’s recent targeting of the Charlotte area, one Latino business owner shared how he was forced to shutter his bakery for the first time in nearly 30 years in order to protect his customers and employees. Federal immigration officials have been “lying,” Manolo’s Bakery owner Manuel “Manolo” Betancur told the Charlotte Observer. “They’re not chasing criminals. They’re chasing anyone who looks, speaks like me, who has an accent like me, who looks like me.”
PUBLIC SAFETY RESOURCES DIVERTED: Under mass deportation architect Stephen Miller’s pernicious mass deportation obsessions, federal employees who were investigating drug traffickers, domestic extremists, and child predators – legitimate dangers to our communities – have been reassigned to operations rounding up hardworking immigrant moms and dads and separating them from their families. In fact, thousands of agents as well as non-law enforcement federal employees have been pulled from assignments surveying storm damage or combating child exploitation and human trafficking. The Homeland Security Investigations agency, which focuses on combating terrorism, child exploitation, and human trafficking, has lost its entire unit – all 6,000 special agents – to Miller, USA Today reported in February. Simply put, mass deportation makes none of us safer.
MASKED AGENTS SPREAD FEAR: Federal agents have been carrying out Trump’s agenda behind masks and in plain clothes, often without displaying badges or agency markings and using unmarked vehicles, creating confusion about whether they’re legitimate officers or impersonators. This has become such a national scourge that following Trump’s racist attacks against Somali community members in Minnesota, local law enforcement publicly urged residents in the state to call 911 if they’re unsure they’re encountering actual federal agents. “We have experienced reports in this city, and I’m sure in St. Paul also, where people called to say that there’s folks that are masked, that they’re not sure if they’re law enforcement, that they may be kidnapping people,” said Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hare. “We have had those reports. I want to be clear to the community, the community should know that if you see something like that, that is legitimate, that you don’t know if someone is law enforcement, you should call 911.”
JUSTICE DENIED: Agents are making warrantless arrests without determining if people are flight risks, and immigrants showing up for their scheduled court hearings are being arrested and detained, with judges funneling people into fast-track deportations without hearings. Meanwhile, the administration has fired over 90 immigration judges across the country this year, including those who granted asylum at higher rates than their peers.
LEGAL IMMIGRANTS DETAINED: From professors with H-1B visas to longtime DACA recipients and even green card holders, people with lawful immigration status are being detained and threatened with deportation. In just one example, Javier Diaz Santana, a 32-year-old DACA recipient who is deaf and mute, was detained for nearly a month following a chaotic raid that targeted his worksite this past June. Diaz was arriving at his car wash job when he saw masked agents descending on the location like it was a warzone and “shouting commands that he could not hear or understand,” NBC Los Angeles reported. Another DACA recipient, Yaa’kub Ira Vijandre, was detained over social media posts critical of ICE’s brutal tactics. Vijandre’s DACA protections – which he’d held without any issue for more than a decade – were subsequently revoked by the administration.
“How does it make the American people safer to rapidly deport a Boston-area college freshman to Honduras – a country she hasn’t lived in since she was a young child? The story of 19-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, detained before boarding a flight to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, it is cruel and outrageous,” America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas said this week. “How does it make the American people safer to be splitting apart families and detaining the spouses of U.S. citizens at green card interviews ‘when they report for the final step to obtain permanent residency,’ per a New York Times report? The reality is that this administration’s escalating mass deportation agenda makes us weaker, poorer and less safe, while dividing us at a moment that demands common-sense and national unity.”
