Trump’s Deportation Machine Terrorizes Immigrant Families, Workers, and Children in Reckless Raids

Washington, D.C. – Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda is getting uglier—continuing to threaten immigrant families, essential workers, and even children in schools. Despite claims that enforcement would be narrowly focused on public safety threats, recent raids have upended entire communities, proving once again that Trump’s immigration policies are cruel, chaotic, and indiscriminate. And now, Trump is asking Congress for $350 billion to turbocharge these devastating attacks on local families and economies.

Families across the country are living in fear as ICE agents detain parents on their way to work, leaving children without caregivers. In California, hardworking community members—including a father taking his son to school—have been swept up in raids. In Texas, a father of five was taken by ICE while pumping gas, leaving his family without income and facing eviction. Meanwhile, schools in major cities are seeing plummeting attendance as children stay home out of fear, and small towns are bracing for economic devastation similar to what they suffered during Trump’s first term, when mass enforcement gutted local workforces.

Read more about the everyday Americans affected by Trump’s anti-immigrant assault:

The Independent: “A father of five was detained by ICE on his way to work. Now his family is losing their home”

“Jose Luis had stopped to pump gas on his way to work in southern Texas when his family’s whole life changed. ICE agents pulled up out of nowhere and demanded to know his immigration status. The father of five, who came to the United States from Mexico in 2010 when he was 19, was quickly placed in handcuffs and taken away. Now, he is facing deportation and permanent separation from his wife and kids — and the family’s sole income is gone.

… Jose Luis is one of some 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. — many of whom have lived, worked, paid taxes and raised families in the country for years — who are being targeted by authorities in what Donald Trump’s administration has promised to be the largest “mass deportation operation” in American history.”

Wall Street Journal: “ICE Raids Send Chill Through Migrant Workforces”

“In the eldercare industry, which relies significantly on immigrant workers, fear and uncertainty are compounding existing hiring challenges, said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, which represents aging-services providers. She said member organizations have reported that some workers are staying home to care for their children, whom they are afraid to send to school. In Wisconsin, some eldercare facilities have recruited immigrants who received work permits after qualifying to stay temporarily in the country under programs such as humanitarian parole and temporary protected status, said Robin Wolzenburg, a senior vice president at LeadingAge Wisconsin. Now that the Trump administration is ending those programs, the eligibility of such workers is in question, she said.”

El País: “Thousands of children are afraid to go to school amid deportation threats: ‘If one day I don’t come to pick you up from the bus, don’t cry’”

“Mrs. P. — whose 15-year-old daughter asked her not to make her name public out of fear that the authorities would come after them — did not send her children to school last week. She’s not the only parent who made that decision in the face of an avalanche of headlines about raids and deportations taking place across the country. Although there is no exact data on how many have kept their kids home, figures from the Department of Education show that on the second and third days after Trump’s arrival at the White House, New York schools had an 80% attendance rate.”

ABC News: “Children, schools face renewed fears over heightened immigration enforcement”

“In the United States, more than 16.7 million people live with at least one undocumented family member – about 6 million of whom are children under the age of 18, according to past estimates from the American Immigration Council. Hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. are undocumented, according to research from Pew Research Center.

The threat of immigration enforcement has the potential to cause emotional, developmental, or economic challenges for millions of children who live day to day with the anxiety of deportation, according to many sources on the mental health of children impacted by immigration… Schools – once unauthorized targets for ICE – now play a central role in how children will face the potential threat. Some local officials have said they will “welcome” ICE agents into their schools, while others have urged the community to learn their rights ahead of any ICE encounters in school.”

Washington Post: “An ICE raid gutted a town in Trump’s first term. Now, fear of a repeat.”

“The close-knit community in O’Neill is still recovering from a 2018 raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at several agricultural facilities, which gutted the town, forced some businesses to close and left many residents reeling.

“I feel like we’ve bounced back to a certain extent, but I feel like there’s a heaviness you can’t truly recover from,” said Kasey Hoffman, a part-time English teacher who helped care for children at the local elementary school after their parents were detained seven years ago. “Even now, it just feels so heavy.”

The town took a big hit to its workforce in the aftermath of the raid. At least 100 families moved away… Tiny O’Neill — population 3,500 — sits among corn and soybean farms and cattle ranches in a remote part of northeastern Nebraska not far from the South Dakota border… The surrounding county’s Latino population increased to 5 percent between 2012 and 2022, with both documented and undocumented migrants arriving to pick tomatoes, plant potatoes and feed hogs. The newcomers have been “a small but consistent part of growth in a state that doesn’t have a lot of growth,” said Josie Schafer, director of the University of Nebraska’s Center for Public Affairs Research.”

Cal Matters: “It was just a regular morning: Californians picked up in recent ICE raids include kids, volunteers”

“A church-going agricultural worker. An Echo Park man taking his son to school. A 16-year-old kid searching for work to support his family in Mexico. Three weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge of some of the first Californians targeted in his high-profile immigration crackdown. It’s very different from the descriptions of hardened criminals President Donald Trump has touted. People CalMatters interviewed about the raids across California suggested those swept up in them are dedicated family members and employees, their lives deeply woven into their communities. None appeared to pose the risks to national security or public safety Trump promised he’d target during his campaign.”

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