Washington, DC – Across the country, Americans are rejecting the chaos, cruelty, and cost of the mass deportation campaign Donald Trump and his allies have built. Farmers, economists, small business owners, and local officials are warning about the damage to their livelihoods, their food supply, and their communities. They join the 58 percent of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. Yet Trump refuses to change course on his destructive mass deportation machine, and each week brings new reports of U.S. citizens detained, deaths in custody, and families torn apart.
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, issued the following statement:
“Donald Trump and his allies promised Americans safety and lower costs. Instead, their mass deportation machine has delivered empty storefronts, higher grocery bills, and shrinking work crews. Farmers, economists, business owners, and local officials are now saying out loud what immigrant families and advocates have known for nearly two years: this machine makes all of us poorer and less safe. The terrorizing of families – and entire communities, deaths in custody, and threats to our democracy are the devastating, predictable results of a lawless agency built to spread fear through violence. And Americans have seen enough. Congress must rein in ICE, demand independent investigations, and stop bankrolling this chaos and cruelty.”
Americans are sounding the alarm as Trump and his allies press ahead:
- Nationwide: More than 40 farmers and agricultural groups, including the Kansas Livestock Association and the Milk Producers Council, warned President Trump and congressional leaders in a letter. They said that targeting immigrant workers is disrupting the nation’s food supply and driving up food costs for every American.
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The “ICE tax” has cost Philadelphia an estimated $811 million in sales, according to a study by Wharton School professor Zeke Hernandez. Nationally, ICE activity cut consumer spending by 6.9 percent in targeted metro areas, costing up to $14 billion in the administration’s first year.
- Charlotte, North Carolina: On October 21, ICE agents blocked Atilio Portillo’s work truck, smashed his windows, pointed a gun at him, and handcuffed him as he shouted that he was a U.S. citizen. Portillo is a small business owner who has lived in the U.S. since 1988 and became a citizen in 2013. Agents also handcuffed his nephew, also a citizen, and detained his brother, who is now held in Georgia.
- Houston, Texas: A U.S. immigration judge ruled that Moussa Diawara could not be deported to Mali, where he faced likely persecution. Diawara is a rideshare driver and the father of two U.S. citizen children, and he has no criminal record. ICE arrested him in July and deported him to Ghana, a country he had never visited, and within days Ghanaian officials forced him onto a flight to Mali. Of the 19 deportees from that flight whom 60 Minutes reached, 17 said they were sent on to countries U.S. judges had barred.
- Folkston, Georgia: On October 23, Luis Sandoval, a 48-year-old man from El Salvador, died in ICE custody at the GEO Group-run D. Ray James facility. Detainees there have been on a hunger strike for nearly three weeks to protest prolonged detention and conditions. Strikers say they have been placed in solitary confinement and threatened with force-feeding. According to The Guardian, Sandoval is the 60th person to die in ICE custody since Trump returned to office.
- Denver, Colorado: Election officials are training poll workers to document and de-escalate any ICE presence at voting locations. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has claimed that ICE has authority to go to polling places. Volunteer sign-ups for nonpartisan poll monitoring in Colorado have jumped from 300 in 2024 to about 800 this year.
