Trump's Anti-Immigration Agenda

• What’s Happening: On June 23rd, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–3 split, allowed the Trump administration to resume swift deportations of migrants to countries to which they have no connection, overriding a lower court order that required migrants to be given the opportunity to challenge their removal
  • Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson fiercely dissented, warning the decision places “thousands at risk of torture or death” by stripping away due‑process protections.
• Why this matters: Undermines asylum protections and fast-tracks deportations with little to no judicial oversight. The administration is doing this because they don’t want to follow the process for deporting people to their actual home countries.
• Next domino? Expect more legal attacks on asylum, TPS, and DACA to follow.
  • In June, the admin, under the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), finalized a rule that blocks DACA recipients (and potentially other non-citizen groups, like those under TPS) from enrolling in ACA plans and receiving premium subsidies through the health insurance exchanges
  • Trump has already revoked Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 300,000 people from countries like El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, and Sudan - many of whom have lived in the U.S. for decades, raising families and building communities.
  • TPS for countries like Honduras and Nicaragua is set to end in September 2025, while early termination of Haiti’s status has been blocked by a judge.
  • The administration is also actively working to dismantle Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), refusing new applications and placing thousands of Dreamers at risk of deportation.
    • DACA renewals remain eligible, but no new applications are being processed amid court challenges.

• What’s Happening: Trump ordered ICE to triple daily quotas for ICE arrests and prioritize deportations in Democratic-led cities following protests and immigrant solidarity actions.
• Why This Matters:
  • Coordinated militarized ICE raids began in L.A., but reports of similar tactics have emerged in Texas, Florida, and Georgia. The head of ICE said the agency’s goal is to treat mass deportations “like Amazon Prime for human beings.”
  • On-the-ground ICE violence—including tear gas, rubber bullets, and indiscriminate arrests—has been documented across multiple cities.
  • Public shows of force are being deployed deliberately to intimidate communities. For example, on July 7, federal immigration agents, accompanied by 90 National Guard troops, carried out an operation at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles—a predominantly immigrant area. Troops and agents advanced on the park using armored vehicles, horses, and armed personnel, but made no arrests and provided no explanation. Such tactics are clear political stunts meant to scare immigrant families and individuals.
• Next Domino? In the reconciliation bill that passed on July 3rd, $29.9 billion was included for ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, including hiring 10k new ICE agents 

This massive institutional expansion is explicitly designed to support up to one million deportations per year. With this level of funding and political backing, Trump’s deportation machine is likely to accelerate and become even more dangerous.

• What’s Happening: On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order attacking birthright citizenship despite its constitutional protection under the 14th Amendment.
  • His executive order was quickly challenged in court, and the Supreme Court opened the door to partially enforcing it, forcing the ACLU and advocates to file new lawsuits to try to block it -  setting up a constitutional crisis with massive implications for millions of U.S.-born children.
  • On Friday, June 27th, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges lack the authority to grant nationwide injunctions in many cases, leaving families without any protection against the executive order while it continues to be challenged in the courts.
• Why this matters: This is a direct assault on one of the bedrock principles of American democracy: that anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen. If Trump’s order stands, it will strip citizenship from children born to immigrant parents, creating a permanent underclass of stateless people in America. The ruling on injunctions also undermines the courts’ ability to provide swift, uniform protection, allowing unconstitutional actions to take root while legal battles drag on. The threat is existential for entire communities who have called this country home for generations.

Next Domino? To be clear, Trump clearly intends to try to shred the 14th Amendment, and courts should easily find this effort unconstitutional - but the MAGA-aligned justices on the Supreme Court are sending strong signals that their first priority is enabling Trump.

• What’s Happening: The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it would begin aggressively pursuing denaturalization—a process that strips U.S. citizenship from naturalized citizens, which has mainly been used to go after war criminals, such as Nazi’s, who lied to gain citizenship. Under Trump, this tool is likely to be weaponized. We know this administration isn’t just going after people who lied on paperwork—it’s targeting immigrants, Muslims, and political dissidents in an effort to instill fear, punish dissent, and redefine who gets to be “American.” In this case, denaturalization is not about serving justice but about excluding specific individuals.
• In a DOJ memo that was released in June, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate dramatically upended the Civil Division’s enforcement priorities that had been in place since its inception in 1957 - protecting and enforcing our rights under the Constitution and the nation’s civil rights laws - to instead prioritize discriminatory MAGA policies.
  • The memo directs civil division attorneys to aggressively pursue denaturalization cases not only for fraud or security risks but also for any individuals deemed “sufficiently important to pursue,” including those involved in political speech.
  • The memo explicitly prioritizes denaturalization as a tool of political enforcement, urging civil attorneys to identify and escalate cases involving national security, foreign influence, and “public interest.” It also explicitly references “advocacy on behalf of foreign nationals” and the “defense of designated terrorist organizations”—a dog whistle historically used to smear activists. The memo dangerously, and intentionally, blurs the line between legal dissent and criminal suspicion, effectively opening the door to stripping citizenship from naturalized Americans based on their political beliefs.
• Why this matters: We’ve already seen these threats in action, even against elected officials and political candidates. In June, amid a wave of Islamophobic rhetoric from Republicans, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) publicly accused Zohran Mamdani (a naturalized citizen who won the Democratic primary for NYC mayor) of “supporting terrorists” and urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to denaturalize and deport him. Trump quickly echoed the call, saying it was something the White House needed to “look into.” This has nothing to do with protecting national security. It’s about punishing a Muslim, pro-Palestinian, anti-corruption candidate for daring to win and challenge Trump's immigration agenda.

Next Domino: The DOJ memo’s vague language (like targeting those “sufficiently important to pursue”) opens the floodgates for politically motivated denaturalization on an unprecedented scale. Legal experts warn this could be used to create an enemies list of naturalized Americans who can be stripped of citizenship, not for crimes, but for beliefs and affiliations. If left unchecked, this policy will create a two-tiered citizenship system where naturalized Americans live in constant fear of losing their rights for speaking out.

• What’s Happening: Across the country, dozens of students, researchers, and workers on valid visas have been abducted, detained for months, denied reentry, or threatened with deportation for engaging in protests or voicing political views—particularly criticism of U.S. foreign policy or support for Palestinian human rights or simply being affiliated with labor or pro-immigrant causes. This all despite bedrock constitutional protections against government crackdowns on free speech.
• Why this matters: These crackdowns are so aggressively aimed at silencing dissent that even U.S. citizens aren’t safe, arrested seemingly for exercising their rights.
  • David Huerta, SEIU California President, was violently arrested during a peaceful protest, despite being a U.S. citizen.
  • Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller, and mayoral candidate, was detained by ICE agents on June 17, 2025, after assisting a migrant exiting a federal immigration court in Manhattan.
  • Ras Baraka, Newark’s Mayor, was arrested by ICE agents (some masked) on May 9th at a new federal immigration detention center that he was protesting at. Mayor Baraka was charged with trespassing, detained for several hours, and later released after charges were dropped. Now, he’s suing the U.S. attorney for NJ, Alina Habba, over political prosecution.
  • Rep. LaMonica McIver (D‑NJ), accompanied Mayor Baraka during the protest and was indicted on multiple charges in late June. She was accused of “assaulting and impeding” federal immigration officers but pleaded not guilty, calling the charges a “brazen attempt at political intimidation,” with trial scheduled for November 10, 2025. 

Next domino? If this trend continues, we’ll see more politically motivated arrests, trumped-up charges against movement leaders, and an expanded apparatus to punish speech that challenges the administration’s immigration and foreign policy agenda. The chilling effect on protest and organizing will be massive, especially in immigrant communities where even U.S. citizenship may no longer guarantee protection from surveillance and detention.

• What’s Happening: In multiple cities, individuals have been abducted by masked federal agents with no visible identification, often in unmarked vehicles, without warrants or explanation.
  • Plainclothes or masked agents have been seen surveilling, harassing, and targeting people solely based on their presence at protests or their political beliefs.
• Why this matters: The use of face coverings and unmarked uniforms by law enforcement is designed to shield law enforcement from consequences, to silence resistance, and to instill terror. It is a calculated move to dehumanize the enforcers while rendering the victims invisible.
• Next Domino? Momentum is building to stop the rise of anonymous, militarized federal policing. On both the federal and state levels, leaders are introducing legislation to hold law enforcement accountable:
  • California legislators just introduced a groundbreaking bill—SB 627, the No Secret Police Act—to prohibit law enforcement officers from hiding their identities behind masks and anonymous uniforms during public operations. The law would require visible identification for all law enforcement, including federal agents operating within the state. And it couldn’t come at a more urgent time. This is the kind of effort we need to be seeing across the country.
  • On June 26th, Congressmen Espaillat and Goldman introduced legislation in Congress aimed at amending the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require law enforcement officers and agents of the Department of Homeland Security engaged in border security or immigration enforcement to display or wear specific insignia and provide identification, and for other purposes.
• On July 8th, Senator Alex Padilla (who was recently forcibly and aggressively removed by masked agents while asking Secretary Noem questions at a news conference in L.A.) along with Senator Cory Booker introduced The VISIBLE Act which would mandate that federal immigration agents prominently display both their agency affiliation (name or acronym) and their personal identification (name or badge number) during enforcement actions. The bill also bans non-medical masks or balaclavas that conceal agents’ faces.

• What’s Happening: The Trump administration is actively expanding detention infrastructure to meet its mass deportation goals.
  • Since January, the administration has activated at least 60 local, state, and federal prisons (public and private) to detain immigrants under ICE and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) custody.
  • Just last week, they opened a new mega-facility dubbed Alligator Alcatraz at a former airport site in Florida. Built in just eight days, it includes over 200 surveillance cameras, 8,500 meters of barbed wire, and 400 armed personnel. Under the ICE-led 287(g) program, Florida police can now arrest and funnel immigrants into this site for interrogation and deportation. The facility is already being expanded in 500-bed increments, with plans to reach 5,000 beds by early July 2025.
• Why this matters:
  • These expansions are part of an aggressive enforcement effort, as directed by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, along with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, to ramp up ICE enforcement to 3,000 arrests per day.
  • As of late June, the administration was detaining 59,000 people, far above the 41,500 beds previously funded by Congress.
  • In the reconciliation bill that passed on July 3rd, $45 billion was included for building new immigration detention centers. According to the American Immigration Council, “This represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system and could result in daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.”

Next Domino: These expansions will fuel more workplace raids, racial profiling, and community targeting, putting more immigrants, and even often lawful residents or citizens (like we’ve already seen happen), into ICE custody without due process.

What’s Happening: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident and father of three, was arrested without a warrant by ICE agents on March 12, 2025, in front of his 5-year-old autistic son. Within 72 hours (despite a 2019 court ruling barring his deportation due to credible threats in El Salvador), he was forcibly removed without due process, a clear violation of U.S. and international law. The Trump administration initially claimed the deportation was an administrative error but later reversed course, falsely labeling Kilmar a “terrorist.” On April 10, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered his return, but Trump defied the ruling, sparking a full-blown constitutional crisis. Although Kilmar was finally returned to the U.S. in June, he remains in custody on bogus charges, with the DOJ now seeking to deport him again—an effort to retroactively justify illegal actions and send a chilling message to immigrant communities and the courts alike.

The Role of CECOT:

• Kilmar was detained at CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo), a mega-prison in El Salvador operated by President Nayib Bukele.
• CECOT is infamous for widespread human rights violations, including:
  • Torture
  • Solitary confinement
  • Forced head-shaving and dehumanizing treatment
  • Denial of access to lawyers and family
  • Malnutrition and overcrowding
• International observers have compared CECOT to wartime torture camps, with images reminiscent of Nazi-era prison conditions.
• Trump paid the Salvadoran government to accept and imprison U.S. deportees at CECOT.
• This partnership has enabled Trump to outsource human rights abuses, claiming deportees are no longer under U.S. jurisdiction once transferred abroad.
• The administration has been sending deportees to CECOT by the planeload, even when they have no criminal record or deportation order.
• Hundreds of immigrants have been disappeared into CECOT since January, with little to no public oversight.

Why This Matters:

• Kilmar’s case is not a one-off situation. It’s a test case for a broader authoritarian playbook.
• Trump is establishing a system where dissenters, immigrants, and critics can be abducted, deported, disappeared, and retroactively criminalized.
• The complicity of foreign governments like Bukele’s in this scheme allows Trump to evade domestic legal limits while weaponizing fear and repression.
• If this isn’t stopped now, the machinery of illegal detention and international exile will only expand.

Next Domino?

The CECOT partnership sets a precedent for similar arrangements with authoritarian regimes in other countries. DHS and ICE are reportedly exploring contracts with governments in other countries to detain deportees outside U.S. jurisdiction. If this trajectory continues, Trump will institutionalize a system of outsourced black sites, turning deportation into a global tool for repression, beyond the reach of U.S. courts or human rights law. 

Meanwhile, Kilmar’s case remains active. Despite the Supreme Court ordering his return, the DOJ is still seeking to deport him again, using retroactive criminalization to justify the original illegal act. The situation has become so dire that Kilmar himself has stated he would rather remain detained indefinitely in the U.S. than risk being deported again. That’s how deeply broken and dangerous this system has become—where detention is the safer option than trusting the government not to disappear you a second time.