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How ICE has changed American life

Immigrant or not, Trump’s mass deportation pledges have fundamentally changed how regular people live.

When candidate Donald Trump promised mass deportations on the 2024 campaign trail, it was hard to imagine exactly what that might turn into.

Though he boasted about implementing the “largest domestic deportation operation” in history, you could be forgiven for believing he meant something more limited — a “sequential” approach (as JD Vance suggested), starting with recent arrivals, “violent criminals,” and suspected gang members.

That, at least, seemed to be what a lot of voters who trusted him on this topic, imagined — including many immigrant-heavy communities who voted Republican in historic numbers, and were also concerned about the sometimes chaotic flow of asylum seekers into the country.

ICE created a new kind of citizen-activist — the case of Charlotte

Local economies still feel under siege — the case of Chicago

The social fabric has been changed — everywhere

Pollsters were quick to note that though many of these deportation proposals were quite popular with the average American, support varied dramatically depending on the details. Targeted ICE arrests of convicted felons and those who arrived in the United States during the Biden presidency polled significantly better than separating mixed-status families, carrying out arrests at or near churches and schools, and deporting longtime residents — who might be your neighbors or friends.

Instead, American cities were occupied by federal law enforcement agencies; the National Guard was deployed to quell protests; unidentified and masked agents strolled through neighborhoods, chased suspects into stores, and arrested immigrants at courthouses; protesters, politicians, and journalists were arrested or injured; people with pending asylum cases were seized and deported to a notorious foreign maximum-security prison; and two American citizens were shot and killed. (changed in case of passage of DHS bill).

Much of the Department of Homeland Security remained shut down or operated without pay as Democrats demanded new limits attached to any funding this month. In response, Trump deployed ICE to airports — to help beleaguered TSA agents and even rehabilitate their image, he says, but also implicitly to pressure an opposition party that has come to see them as the president’s personal army and associate them with repression. “That’ll drive the Democrats crazy,” US Rep. James Comer (R-KY), said on Fox Business News recently.

A year into this deportation program, it’s safe to say that the joint work of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US Border Patrol, and other federal agencies have reshaped American life, from coast-to-coast, in both dramatic and more quiet ways. It has touched all kinds of ethnic communities — Somalis in Minnesota, Haitians in Ohio, Arabs in Michigan — and has had a particular impact on the nation’s largest cohort of recent immigrants, those from Latin America.

A new kind of civically conscious activist has risen in places that experienced ICE surges or are continuing to see enforcement actions. Local economies were devastated by deportation efforts, and are still struggling to recover. And fear, suspicion — and, in some cases, paranoia — have remade the social fabric of communities touched by ICE.

But in conversations with affected people across the country, there’s also a sense of hope — and a sense that the Trump administration is realizing how far it has gone, and may be attempting to tone down or change how it pursues its immigration goals.

ICE created a new kind of citizen-activist — the case of Charlotte

When rumors began circulating last year that ICE was planning a surge of agents to the Charlotte, North Carolina, area, locals were alarmed and looking for something to do.

“I was never really an activist, but the stuff that I was seeing, I just didn’t like,” Jonathan Pierce, a drugstore employee in Hickory, North Carolina, told me. “I didn’t like how Trump talked about immigrants and I was seeing how the immigration stuff was affecting people that I work with, who are my friends, who have been active in church.”

Fortunately, for Pierce, he had options. Concerned citizens had an easy entry point into local activism and a clear blueprint for action that had been prepared months in advance and was being tested and updated in cities around the country.

In November, Homeland Security officially announced Operation “Charlotte’s Web.” Soon, unmarked vans and masked federal agents patrolled the city and its suburbs. They would end up carrying out raids, arresting and detaining hundreds, and sparking fear in the region’s primarily Hispanic immigrant communities. But locals were already organizing and responding.

It started at the grassroots level, with support from religious leaders. Immigrant rights’ groups and legal aid organizations were already in contact with pastors, priests, and preachers in the region to iron out ways they could support immigrant neighbors. Congregants at the First United Methodist church in Taylorsville, North Carolina — Pierce among them — had already begun attending trainings on how to respond.

The original plan was to teach volunteers how they could help vulnerable neighbors get to and from churches and schools, the Rev. Joel Simpson, a First United Methodist pastor, told me. As they watched ICE tactics grow more aggressive in other cities where they had launched major operations, “those trainings shifted from what we had originally planned once we realized this could get much more violent and intense.”

Working with groups like Siembra NC and the Carolina Migrant Network, churches began to host more trainings and activate neighbors to sign up to monitor ICE operations. They learned deescalation tactics, how to communicate via whistles, and how to document interactions between ICE agents and detained people. They refreshed their frightened neighbors on what their rights were, shared how to get legal assistance, and how to be aware of potential danger.

In all, more than 2,000 people were trained and organized during that first week of ICE operations in the area, Simpson told me.

The defining image of resistance during Trump’s first term was the mass protest: The Women’s March at its start,........

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