The Trump administration’s extensive deportation campaign has relied on antiquated legislation—including the 1798 Alien Enemies Act—executive orders, and violent ICE raids of neighborhoods around the country in order to make good on his campaign promise of “mass deportations.” According to a report from the Migration Policy Institute, the United States government is enlisting numerous federal agencies—among them the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—as well as the United States military in advancing the state’s agenda to obstruct what the administration bluntly describes as an “invasion.” This is the kind of openly dehumanizing rhetoric frequently emphasized by Donald Trump throughout the years.
In April, the IRS and Department of Homeland Security finalized an agreement, signed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which would have the tax enforcement agency hand over information on undocumented immigrants, a collaboration that would assist in their deportation efforts. In another troubling cross-agency partnership, an internal memo viewed by the Wall Street Journal in January revealed that the Trump administration had granted DEA agents the same powers as immigration officers. WSJ wrote that “The memo, sent by acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman, says DHS is granting immigration-enforcement authority to several agencies at the Justice Department, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the US Marshals Service.”
These federal agreements, and the granting of immigration administration powers to other federal agents outside of ICE, including local law enforcement, are designed to expedite deportations and has already expanded to at least 121 departments across 12 states.
US immigration policy has always left a deep, harrowing impact on immigrant families. In an article published by the University of North Carolina’s School of Law in 2010, several studies examine the social, economic and human cost of deportation on communities across the United States since the mid-1990s. “The findings from the immigrant household surveys [taken in] five Texas communities paint a picture of anxiety, stress, and confusion as a result of increased enforcement” North Carolina’s School of Law wrote. The studies emphasized another troubling feature of immigration enforcement that has only intensified in the last two decades: that both immigrants and non-immigrant residents have assisted local law enforcement and taken it upon themselves to “vigilantly [monitor] immigrants in the community and needlessly [harass] them.” Today, legislation like Missouri Senate Bill 72 proposes urging Americans to report “illegal immigrants,” offering what can be arguably seen as a bounty of information provided through a tip line. The chilling effect is already being felt, even as the bill faces challenges.
The Trump administration’s attacks on immigration are now also extending to legal advocates. An executive order published on March 22 deliberately targets immigrant legal service workers says senior staff attorney Sophia Elena Gurulé. She has worked in the Bronx, New York since 2017 in the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project defending both detained and non-detained working-class people facing deportation. Gurulé tells Splinter that this executive order serves two purposes: it stokes fear for legal advocates and those that fund their services, and it encourages immigration judges to specifically target and bully legal service workers “as a means to facilitate and expedite deportations to meet their quotas.”
Gurulé argues that the Obama administration and the Biden administration helped facilitate the current political moment of mass deportations that is now central to the Trump administration’s immigration policy. More unique to the Trump administration, Gurulé argues, is what she describes as being a more public, rabid hostility towards Black and indigenous communities with an almost exceptional focus on propagandizing, dehumanizing, and targeting people for deportation. “This is a difference in form rather than substance. As an example, the Biden administration was massively scaling up and investing in costly ‘alternatives to detention’ programs and surveillance technologies to support private industries in capitalizing off human monitoring (ISAP) and shackling (ankle monitors),” she said.
“Now, however, we are observing the Trump administration pursuing human shackling even where an immigration judge has determined that a person should be released from ICE detention on bond as they pose neither a danger to the community or a flight risk,” Gurulé continued. “Ankle shackling by ICE would be rare in these circumstances, unless ICE was otherwise ordered to do so in the bond order issued by the immigration judge. However, ankle shackling for people ordered release by an immigration judge at a bond hearing appears to be an increasingly normalized ICE practice whereas it was (in my experience) more uncommon before January 2025.”
In light of the growing threat impacting immigrant communities, Gurulé advises that not only should people know their rights, and get access to “know your rights training materials,” they should be developing emergency plans in the event that someone they know is detained by ICE. Communities around the country can also assist those facing deportation by joining local mutual aid groups and pressure their local city or state governments to stop their cooperation with ICE.
Gurulé highlights one example where “in New York state people can contact Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislators to support the New York for All Act and Dignity Not Detention Act, which, if law, would limit the use of New York’s resources to facilitate ICE arrest, detention, and deportation.” She stressed that we should “not underestimate the importance of these types of bills. ‘Opt-out’ policies on the city and state level are necessary for reducing the size and scope of ICE enforcement in your community. Politicians will support bills like these when facing overwhelming community pressure, so, ponte las pilas: make it politically popular—and, therefore, possible—to end ICE detention and ICE collaboration in your community.”
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