This week, much of the world has watched as protests in California against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have led to violent clashes between demonstrators and California law enforcement. This stand-off would only escalate as Donald Trump would use his power as US President to circumvent the authority of California Governor Gavin Newsom and controversially send in the national guard (and US the military) to try to quell the protests taking place in the state.
The thing that has sparked this round of protests were the presence of ICE officials conducting arrests of suspected illegal immigrant residents in Los Angeles. ICE officials were reportedly seen arresting workers at multiple locations around LA in videos shared online, which led to confrontations between protesters and ICE officers. In response to the protests, Trump has now gone as far as to send in members of the United States military to California, against the wishes of the governor, to confront protesters.
Immigration has always been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career. Right from when Trump first decided that he would run for political office in 2016, when he would infamously call Mexicans coming across the US Southern border drug dealers and rapists. Up until the 2024 US presidential election, when Trump would make immigration a major part of his campaign once again. Trump’s anti-immigration message would also come at a time when attitudes among voters in Western countries have begun to sour towards migration.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”
Donald Trump in 2015
All over the Western world today, numerous far-right parties have managed to ride the wave of Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric to rise to prominence. Trump would be able to successfully use that anti-migration message once again to win a second term as US President. Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump would repeatedly call out the Joe Biden administration’s failure to handle the surge of migrants that had been arriving at the US Southern border.
It would not be a controversial statement to say that the immigration policy of the Biden administration was a major disaster. From seemingly the first day Biden took office, thousands of migrants saw it as an opportunity to take a chance at crossing the US southern border almost every day of his presidency. During Biden’s presidency, there had been over 10 million reported encounters between migrants and US border authorities, with over 8 million encounters taking place at the US Southern border with Mexico.
The influx of migrants did not only come from neighbouring Mexico, either. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world made the journey towards the North American continent to attempt to cross the US southern border. Potentially millions made the treacherous journey across rainforests, rivers, and oceans, all to make it to the US southern border. The infamous Darién Gap, a 60-mile stretch of dense, roadless rainforest connecting Central and South America, had become a major route taken by migrants despite the dangers associated with attempting to cross it.
US border states would have their cities and towns overrun by the influx of migrants, putting a strain on their resources. We would even see migrants being used as political pawns when Texas’ governor would begin shipping migrants over to so-called “sanctuary cities,” in mostly Democrat-controlled states. So the influx of migrants into the US began to be felt all over the country, not just within the southernmost US states that are bordering Mexico.
The failure of the Biden administration to properly deal with the influx of migrants was likely one of the biggest reasons (if not the biggest reason) for the loss by democrats in the 2024 election. Trump made it clear that he would stop the flow of migrants entering through the southern border and that he would work to deport the millions of migrants who had entered the United States illegally throughout the Biden administration. And evidently, US voters preferred Trump’s immigration policies.
However, with that said, it is difficult to not look at Trump’s mass deportation policy and not conclude that it is inhumane on so many levels. One can only imagine the massive amount of desperation felt by the millions of people who made the dangerous journey in hope of building a better life for themselves and their families in the United States. These are people who are often fleeing persecution, violence, war, and poverty in their own countries. They would not otherwise put their lives at such risk if that weren’t the case.
And yet we are literally seeing the Trump administration deport people to war-torn countries, knowing very-well that their lives may be put at risk as a result. Like when Secretary of State Marco Rubio would announce that the United States would revoke all visas of South Sudanese passport holders. Marco Rubio accused the transitional government in South Sudan of taking advantage of the United States by not accepting deportation of South Sudanese nationals “in a timely manner.”
I am taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and to restrict any further issuance to prevent entry into the United States, effective immediately, due to the failure of South Sudan's transitional government to accept the return of its repatriated…
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) April 5, 2025
In what world is it acceptable to just broadly revoke the visas of every single person from one country because of the actions of their government, which they almost certainly would have nothing to do with? To make matters worse, this action by the US Secretary of State came at a worrying time, because there have been fears of a renewal of the civil war in South Sudan due to clashes between the government and armed groups. That brutal civil war that left nearly half a million dead and has significantly stunted South Sudan’s development.
South Sudanese nationals are not the only people from war-torn or underdeveloped nations that have been targeted by the Trump administration, either. The Trump administration has been fighting to revoke the temporary protected status of 530, 000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. And the US Supreme Court recently sided with the Trump administration, allowing for the revocation of their protected status, which will likely lead to their deportations.
That means that Donald Trump and members of his administration see no problem sending over half a million migrants back to Cuba and Venezuela, two nations the US has heavily sanctioned. Or Haiti, which could very well be considered to be a failed state due to the amount of gang violence that has engulfed the entire nation. Or Nicaragua, a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world, that has been run by an authoritarian government for many decades now.
Not only is this immigration policy inhumane, the way in which the Trump administration has gone about implementing their agenda has often been illegal and in some cases plainly anti-democratic. The Trump administration has been deporting people without any kind of proper due process, and has also been targeting international students currently studying in the United States for their speech or for their participation in demonstrations against Israel on university campuses.
One of such cases has been that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in CECOT, a maximum security Terrorism Confinement Centre in El Salvador. The Trump administration would themselves admit to mistakenly deporting him due to an “administrative error,” however when they were ordered to work with the El Salvadoran government to secure his release, they would not put in any real effort into facilitating his release.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is only the most prominent case, so far, of migrants who have been illegally deported. The Trump administration has been found to have illegally deported a whole host of people over the course of the few months they have been in charge. One such example was in May, when a judge ruled that the White House’s deportation of eight people to South Sudan was illegal. The judge ruled so because the migrants who the Trump administration deported to South Sudan were not even from South Sudan. They came from countries such as Myanmar and Vietnam.
One prominent example of the Trump administration’s targeting international students studying at US universities is that of Rümeysa Öztürk who was arrested and had her visa revoked by the Trump administration for simply contributing to a newspaper column that had been critical of Israel for its actions in its war in Gaza. Öztürk did not make any calls for violence or write anything that could be considered antisemitic towards Jews in the column she contributed to, however, she would still be targeted by members of the Trump administration.
The column Rümeysa Öztürk contributed to discusses the allegations of genocide directed at the state of Israel and called for Tufts University to avoid doing business with companies associated with the state of Israel. And as a result, officers from the US Department of Homeland Security would arrest her near her home. And she is just one of thousands of university students who have had their visas revoked by the Trump administration for their speech which has been critical of Israel, despite the First Amendment rights of the United States Constitution.
As a result of their unlawful actions, the Trump administration is currently embroiled in a series of court cases over their illegal deportations of migrants who had not been given the right to due process. However, whenever we have seen the Trump administration being held to account by US judges, we have seen Trump personally launch tirades of attacks aimed at judges who have ruled against him and his administration.
Today in California, we are seeing Trump violating the sovereignty of the state of California by sending in the national guard as well as members of the US military to quell protests taking place in the state. This action has been taken explicitly against the wishes of the democratically elected governor of the state of California. There are no statewide protests taking place currently in California which would warrant such actions.
This is being clearly done for political purposes against a state run by the opposition party in the United States. In the middle of this, Trump has even suggested that Gavin Newsom, the California governor, should be arrested. A shocking statement by the United States president which exemplifies the truly undemocratic nature of this administration. Newsom himself would fire back at Trump, saying “These are the acts of a dictator, not a President,” in a post on 𝕏.
– Inciting and provoking violence
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 8, 2025
– Creating mass chaos
– Militarizing cities
– Arresting opponents
These are the acts of a dictator, not a President. https://t.co/e4YjBMPtna
To think that the Trump administration would even go as far as targeting day-labourers, who often work in fields like construction, in their ICE raids. These people are doing jobs that Americans are not typically interested in doing, and they are doing it at much lower salaries than regular Americans would accept, without getting many of the same benefits that an American would. They are doing work that is contributing mightily to the American economy, yet they are still being targeted.
It is important to acknowledge the heart of this issue are genuine people. We are talking about mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, even children that have been caught up in this fight of immigration and deportation. The majority of these people arrive in the United States fleeing terrible circumstances in their search for a better life from themselves and their families. We are talking about real people, not just some pawns on a political chess board.
This inhumane mass deportation policy is separating family members from their loved ones and is stretching the American legal system to its limits with the number of major legal battles currently taking underway. What does it say about America if this is how it chooses to treat some of the most vulnerable people who came to it for assistance?
