Washington, DC — The scope, harm, and indiscriminate assault of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda are coming into sharper relief. From ongoing reports of those actually detained in local ICE raids to indications about the growing fears and harms spreading throughout broader communities, the Trump agenda already is causing chaos beyond the immigrant community.
As NBC News details in coverage recapping this weekend’s ICE enforcement actions, “nearly half of those detained don’t have criminal records.” This data point and the indiscriminate targeting of immigrants should be unsurprising given the report from the Washington Post, “Trump officials issue quotas to ICE officers to ramp up arrests” and given the Trump administration’s rescinding of common sense immigration enforcement priorities that used to direct enforcement actions against real public safety threats.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“We have said it before: the fear, cruelty and chaos is the point no matter the harm and cost to our families or our economy. It is evident that the objective is not public safety, but sowing fear and generating headlines. By eliminating common sense enforcement priorities and ramping up ICE quotas, the Trump team is proving that this was never about targeting “criminals” but rather ugly publicity at the expense of harming deeply rooted families and contributors to this country. We’re already hearing stories of parents keeping their children home from school and families avoiding church services, and we’re hearing the worries of leaders from essential industries, concerned about what the loss of workers in agriculture, construction, and health care will do to their workforce and our broader economy. Trump’s mass deportation plans will not result in a safer America. Instead, the Trump administration’s goal is to maximize the number of immigrants deported, even if that means jeopardizing public safety, cruelly splitting apart families, and harming our economy in the process.”
Among the examples of fear and harms of the Trump indiscriminate enforcement include:
- Schools and K-12 Educators. As the National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle noted in a new press release, which includes new NEA immigration guidance for schools and communities: “As educators, we are united in supporting every student—no matter the language they speak or their place of birth – and ensuring they have access to safe, welcoming public schools. Tragically, for our nation, the incoming Trump administration is committed to a mass deportation agenda that will inflict irreversible harm on our students, their families and communities.”
- Restaurants and Food Service Industry. As The New York Times reported in, “As Immigration Crackdown Looms, Restaurants Are Racked With Fear”: “As the Trump administration rolls out its changes to the immigration system, fear is surging in the food-service industry as it braces itself for a promised crackdown on unauthorized workers. Immigrant labor, both authorized and unauthorized, is integral to the staffing and running of restaurants in the United States. In a 2024 data brief, the National Restaurant Association reported that 21 percent of restaurant workers in the United States were immigrants. That figure does not include unauthorized workers, however; the Center for Migration Studies has estimated they number an additional one million employees.”
- Churches and Houses of Worship: As NPR reported in, “Churches have a long history of being safe havens — for immigrants and others”: “U.S. churches — once deemed off-limits to immigration authorities due to their “sensitive” status within communities — now face the prospect of federal agents arresting migrants within their walls, under a new Trump administration policy … It’s an abrupt about-face for federal policies that had hewn much closer to decades and centuries of tradition. Migrants have long found support systems in houses of worship, including some churches that 40 years ago became sanctuaries for people facing deportation.”
- Those Who Arrived in the U.S. with Legal Status: Among the blizzard of immigration announcements and executive orders included the ending of the CBP One app that incentivized legal migration and reduced border pressures, as well as the issuing of enforcement guidance to potentially target those who arrived legally. As Washington Post syndicated columnist Catherine Rampell wrote, “Shutting down these legal, orderly routes for immigrating to America not only betrays the people who waited patiently and followed our laws. It also incentivizes more illegal immigration, since desperate people fleeing war and persecution will still find ways to come.”
- U.S. Citizens and Military Veterans: The troubling details of last week’s Newark, NJ ICE raid – which led to the detention of a U.S. military veteran and U.S. citizen – was a troubling snapshot of the types of indiscriminate enforcement we fear the Trump administration is seeking to turbocharge.
