Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Donald Trump successfully championed anti-immigrant hysteria during his 2024 (re)election campaign … and it worked. Once in office, immigration became the leading political issue of Trump’s presidency.

The Department of Homeland Security’s claims a record arrests and deportations since Trump took office. In an April 28, 2025, press release, it claimed that immigration arrests and deportations had “already surpassed the entirety of Fiscal Year 2024 [numbers], and we’re just 100 days into this administration.”

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, stated in late May 2025 that the administration had deported around 200,000 people over four months; the Department of Homeland Security reported over 207,000 deportations as of June 11, 2025. The New York Times indicate over 200,000 deportations since Trump’s return to office.

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reports that the Trump administration recorded fewer than 932,000 deportations; other sources suggest a figure closer to 1.5 million deportations.

TRAC reports that “deportations during a similar period [February-May 2024] under President Joe Biden’s administration” 257,000 people were deported. Pres. Barack Obama deported 3 million noncitizens over his two terms in office. This is, according to one source, “more than any other president in American history.”

In comparison, Pres. George Bush removed about 870,000 people; Pres. Bill Clinton, about 2 million; and Trump about 1.2 million people during his first term.

Trump, like many presidents and politicians before him, knowns that foreign and foreign-born Americans are a perfect target. And U.S. history is the history of targeting the other as the enemy, often resulting in deportations and/or forced migrations.

Americas were divided over slavery, not only whether it was immoral if not illegal, but whether to expand it from the South to the new states in the West (e.g., Kansas). A decade before the Civil War started, the abolitionists were divided over what to do with the slave population, especially when they were freed. In 1854, future president Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Peoria, IL, arguing:

“I should not know what to do as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first........

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