Trump ramps up deportation spectacle with new stunts and ICE funding
Why it matters: Once-fringe tactics — an alligator-moated detention camp, deportations to war zones, denaturalization of immigrant citizens — are now being proudly embraced at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
It's an extraordinary shift from Trump's first term, when nationwide backlash and the appearance of cruelty forced the administration to abandon its family separation policy for unauthorized immigrants.
Six months into his second term — and with tens of billions of dollars in new funding soon flowing to ICE — Trump is only just beginning to scale up his mass deportation machine.
Driving the news: Trump on Tuesday toured a temporary ICE facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed " Alligator Alcatraz," where thousands of migrants will be detained in a remote, marshland environment teeming with predators.
MAGA influencers invited on the trip gleefully posted photos of the prison's cages and souvenir-style "merchandise," thrilling their followers and horrifying critics.
Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer drew outrage after tweeting that "alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now" — widely interpreted as a reference to the Hispanic population of the United States.
The big picture: Citing the millions of unauthorized immigrants who crossed the border under President Biden, Trump and his MAGA allies have framed the second-term crackdown as a long-overdue purge.
The result is an increasingly draconian set of enforcement measures designed to deter, expel and make examples out of unauthorized immigrants.
Some newer members of the MAGA coalition, such as podcaster Joe Rogan, have expressed deep discomfort with the targeting of non-criminal undocumented immigrants.
Zoom in: Trump's deportation efforts exploded into a full-blown spectacle in March, when the U.S. flew hundreds of alleged gang members to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.
The operation was captured in glitzy promotional footage, distributed on official White House social media, that showed shaved and shackled migrants being marched off planes and busses at gunpoint.
Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador but brought back to face human trafficking charges in the U.S., claims he suffered "severe beatings" and was tortured in the prison.
Zoom out: Trump's immigration toolkit has expanded since March, as his aides push for a dramatically higher pace of arrests and deportations.
Trump federalized the National Guard in California and deployed troops in Los Angeles to protect federal ICE agents, giving the military a rare and highly contentious role in immigration raids.
The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to deport undocumented immigrants to non-origin countries — including war torn nations such as South Sudan and Libya.
Hundreds of migrants are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This week, Trump claimed that "conceptual work" is underway to reopen Alcatraz — the decrepit former island prison in San Francisco, now a tourist site.
The latest: On Thursday, ICE announced it had arrested and was preparing to deport Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. — accusing him of cartel ties just days after he headlined an arena against influencer Jake Paul.
What to watch: Denaturalization of U.S. citizens — once a legal backwater — is gaining traction as Trump and his MAGA allies push the envelope on nativist rhetoric.
The Justice Department has begun prioritizing stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship when they're charged with crimes and "illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process."
But some MAGA influencers are pushing to weaponize denaturalization more broadly — not just as a legal remedy for fraud, but as a tool to punish ideological opponents.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has called for the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a U.S. citizen in 2018.
Trump has echoed false claims about Mamdani being in the country "illegally," and threatened to arrest the democratic socialist if he impedes federal immigration operations in New York.
Between the lines: For MAGA influencers obsessed with the notion of protecting Western civilization, denaturalization is also about enforcing cultural loyalty.
Prominent voices on the right have argued that immigrants who haven't properly "assimilated" — by their definition — should be vulnerable to losing their citizenship.
"The MAGA movement is willing to make examples of the people who have failed to [assimilate] so that in the future, the bar is set higher," said Raheem Kassam, editor of The National Pulse.
The bottom line: MAGA is leveraging a precedent-busting president to set a new standard for immigration enforcement — one that could define Republican policy for years to come.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Trump says he will start talks with China on TikTok deal
President Donald Trump late Friday said that the United States 'pretty much has a deal' for an American company to acquire the U.S. branch of TikTok, adding that he intended to restart talks next week with China to approve the deal. 'We're going to start Monday or Tuesday talking to China,' Trump told reporters traveling on Air Force One on Friday night as it headed to Bedminster, New Jersey. 'We think we probably have to get it approved by China. Not definitely, but probably.' He added, 'I think the deal is good for China, and it's good for us. It's money, it's a lot of money.' Trump did not say who the potential buyer was. The president said earlier in the week that he had found a buyer for the U.S. branch of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video app that faces a ban adopted by Congress over national security concerns. A 2024 law required that the app effectively be banned in the United States unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold it to a non-Chinese company. Congress was concerned that sensitive user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. It was not clear if the deal would comply with some of the requirements Congress adopted for a sale of TikTok, particularly if ByteDance chose not to share the app's algorithm with the U.S. buyers. Private equity firms have been hesitant to invest in a deal without some form of indemnification. Trump has declined to enforce the law banning the app, which was passed by large bipartisan majorities and unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court. Shortly after being sworn in, Trump issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to suspend enforcement of the TikTok ban and has since repeatedly extended it. Attorney General Pam Bondi has told tech companies that Trump has the constitutional power to effectively set aside laws. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
an hour ago
Alleged arsonist charged over fire at Australian synagogue
MELBOURNE, Australia -- A man was charged Sunday over an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue in an apparent escalation of antisemitic violence in Australia's second-most populous city. Angelo Loras, 34, appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court Sunday charged with arson, endangering life and property damage. He was also charged with possessing a 'controlled weapon' on Saturday when he was arrested. The charge sheet does not say what that weapon was. The Sydney resident did not enter a plea or apply to be released on bail. Magistrate John Lesser remanded Loras in custody to appear in court next on July 22. Flammable liquid was ignited at the door of the East Melbourne Synagogue, also known as the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, on Friday night as 20 worshippers shared a Shabbat meal inside. The congregation escaped without harm via a rear door and firefighters contained the blaze to the entrance area of the 148-year-old building. It was the first of three apparent displays of antisemitic violence across the city on Friday and early Saturday morning. Authorities have yet to establish a link between incidents at the synagogue and two businesses. Also in downtown Melbourne on Friday night, around 20 masked protesters harassed diners in an Israeli-owned restaurant. A restaurant window was cracked, tables were flipped and chairs thrown as protesters chanted 'Death to the IDF,' referring to the Israel Defense Forces. A 28-year-old woman was arrested at the scene and charged with hindering police. Police are also investigating the spray-painting of a business in Melbourne's northern suburbs and an arson attack on three vehicles attached to the business before dawn on Saturday. The vehicles had also been graffitied. Police said there were antisemitic 'inferences' at the scene. The business had also been the target of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the past year. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke met with Jewish leaders at the damaged synagogue on Sunday. Burke told reporters that investigators were searching for potential links between the three incidents. 'At this stage, our authorities have not drawn links between them. But obviously there's a link in antisemitism. There's a link in bigotry. There's a link in a willingness to either call for violence, to chant violence or to take out violent actions. They are very much linked in that way,' Burke said. 'There were three attacks that night and none of them belonged in Australia. Arson attacks, the chanting calls for death, other attacks and graffiti — none of it belonged in Australia and they were attacks on Australia,' Burke added. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Australian government to 'take all action to deal with the rioters to the fullest extent of the law and prevent similar attacks in the future.' 'I view with utmost gravity the antisemitic attacks that occurred last night in Melbourne, which included attempted arson of a synagogue in the city and a violent assault against an Israeli restaurant by pro-Palestinian rioters,' Netanyahu said in a statement on Saturday. 'The reprehensible antisemitic attacks, with calls of 'death to the IDF' and an attempt to attack a place of worship, are severe hate crimes that must be uprooted,' he added.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
The Supreme Court stripped judges of a powerful tool to fight Trump's autocracy. Congress must give it back.
But now they can't. Based on the Supreme Court's reading of a 1789 law, lower courts can now only take such action on specific cases before them, meaning that even clear-cut violations of the law could continue against those without the wherewithal to go to court. Advertisement Congress can and must correct this mistake. Lawmakers should pass legislation that protects judges' ability to provide robust equitable remedies when people's rights are threatened by legally or constitutionally dubious administration actions. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Now, it's true that there have been problems with universal injunctions, and judges have sometimes misused them. But the court's ruling took a sledgehammer to a system that should have been fixed by Congress with a scalpel. And in the case of Trump, the ruling opens the door for him to strip birthright citizenship from American-born babies, continue whisking migrants to countries foreign to them with little notice and without due process, and engage in other actions that threaten people's rights and freedoms. Advertisement The court's 6-3 ideologically split opinion, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was based on the majority's interpretation of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The justices considered if the statute authorizes broad preliminary injunctions like that issued by Boston-based US District Court Justice Brian Murphy, which paused Trump's executive order to deny birthright citizenship to children born to some migrants. 'The answer is no,' Barrett wrote for the majority. Instead, the court held, challengers of the policy who have standing to bring suit can only obtain such preliminary relief for themselves. '[P]rohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against the child of an individual pregnant plaintiff will give that plaintiff complete relief: Her child will not be denied citizenship,' Barrett wrote. 'And extending the injunction to cover everyone similarly situated would not render her relief any more complete.' This is untenable, and will only lead to a cruel game of judicial whack-a-mole that fails to provide adequate protection to those most imperiled by these policies. The onus should not fall on those who are targeted by these policies to fend for themselves. It should fall on the administration to show that it is acting in a lawful way. The court did just the opposite, holding that it is the administration that will likely suffer irreparable harm if courts dare to exercise their authority as a check on the executive. The overuse of universal injunctions has been an issue of increasing bipartisan concern, particularly since the Obama administration. In the last two decades, both the number of executive orders issued and the number of temporary injections blocking them have steadily ballooned. But the number of executive orders Trump has issued in his second term is without historical precedent, even exceeding Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who issued a flurry of edicts in an effort to implement his New Deal agenda. Advertisement And many of Trump's orders are based on strained legal or constitutional arguments, such as the administration's claim that the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship protection only extended to children of enslaved people, that the Alien Enemies Act allows migrants to be deported without due process, or that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the government to send migrants to countries where they've never been and to which they have no connection. Judges must have the ability to decide when relief extending beyond named plaintiffs is warranted. Should there be limits on that power? Yes, and Congress can include them in its bill. It can also underscore that states can still seek statewide relief from policies they can demonstrate harm all of their residents, and ease the process for class actions to be formed at the earliest stages of litigation to give relief to groups of people who demonstrate a need for protection. Judges handling the flurry of Trump-related litigation need more tools, not fewer. It's lawmakers' duty to give those tools to them. The Supreme Court must also swiftly take up and decide the constitutional and legal questions presented by Trump's orders. The justices could have rejected the Trump administration's erroneously limited reading of the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship protections, but opted instead to leave that question for another day. But given the risks of the order, there is no time like the present. And in the meantime, federal judges must do all they can to help challengers who will be harmed by Trump's policies. The Supreme Court did not tie judges' hands completely when it comes to equitable relief. Quick certification of class actions and swiftly granting relief to states that demonstrate the peril to their residents are among the arrows still in judges' quivers. They must use them. Advertisement We are not as bound or doomed by history as the Supreme Court's justices believe. The public needs to demand that members of the legislative and judiciary branches stand up and reclaim their powers to check a president who believes he is above the law and the Constitution. Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
