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Is the Trump administration creating a group in the US with fewer protections against executive power owing to their immigration status? Its often openly racist actions suggest so. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims to target “the worst of the worst” – undocumented migrants who commit violent crimes. Yet the Guardian reported that over half of those arrested in July had no criminal convictions or pending charges. That month, ICE made record arrests and deportations, apprehending 1,500 people and removing 1,100 daily.
When campaigning, Donald Trump falsely claimed that Haitians were “eating the pets”. In office, his administration moved to end temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians. In June, the supreme court let the protection expire, leaving about 350,000 people at risk of deportation to a country gripped by violence and instability. The court’s decision means more than 1 million TPS holders from 13 nations previously considered too unsafe to return to are now at risk of deportation. Many have lived and worked legally in the US for years.
Although Barack Obama deported a record 430,000 people in 2013, his administration focused largely on border-crossers. Mr Trump’s crackdown reaches deep into America, targeting those who call the country home. The Economist reports that Trumpian legal tactics have left 1.7 million more immigrants open to deportation.
Mr Trump’s dehumanising rhetoric does political work: it turns groups into threats, making harsh treatment easier to justify. By calling migration an “invasion”, he sought to suspend habeas corpus – the ancient safeguard against arbitrary detention. When that proved too much even for Mr Trump, his administration attacked due process instead. In July 2025, an ICE directive quietly rewrote detention policy, treating many migrants arrested inside the US as if they had just arrived at the border, denying them bond hearings. For many, the only recourse was to go to the federal courts. Judges repeatedly ruled the policy illegal yet thousands languish in detention for months awaiting relief.
The White House has sought to deport immigrants for protected political speech. Last week, a federal judge ruled visa cancellations for noncitizen students’ pro-Palestinian advocacy unconstitutional. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and permanent resident whose arrest by ICE in 2025 after Gaza protests made global news, is still fighting a final deportation order – a stark threat to liberty.
Mr Trump’s immigration crackdown still fires up his Maga base, but is unpopular with many Americans. In one week in July, three ICE encounters ended in death. ICE’s masked thuggishness is a disgrace. So is the president’s cruelty. The Brookings Institution thinktank estimates that more than 100,000 children, three-quarters of whom are probably US citizens, have been separated from their parents during Mr Trump’s second term.
The argument within the US right is moving beyond undocumented migrants and noncitizens. Some Republicans are pushing to restrict the rights of naturalised and dual citizens – including their right to run for office. They may be spooked by the success of the Ugandan-born New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose family has Indian roots. Mr Trump has long spoken about – and treated – people differently according to their race. He is still doing so. The US has been down this road before. Abraham Lincoln understood the danger: once equality admits exceptions, where do they stop?
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