Mass Deportations

President Trump hasn’t been in office for a full month. He has already put a multitude of orders into action, beginning his presidency by reversing a lot of Biden’s orders and actions, withdrawing the U.S from the World Health Organization (again), making the U.S only recognize two genders, and most importantly granting a 75-day extension to the well known Tiktok ban! Because that benefited Americans greatly.

This is just a fraction of all the things Trump put into order. Despite the seriousness of some of the issues, there is one that has been weighing on people's minds ever since he won the election in November 2024. What are his plans for Deportation?

When Trump first went into office in 2016, he wasted no time targeting immigrants coming into America. This is where his famous quote “We need a wall” first came into play. Trump made plans to make the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico even bigger and more secure so no one could cross the border illegally, even demanding that Mexico would pay for the border but that never happened. It didn't go far despite Trump taking 1.6 billion dollars from Congress to fund this wall. While the wall did have some renovations, it was never the “Great Wall” Trump wanted. That didn’t stop him from deporting over 1.5 million immigrants in his four years of office.

But what does that have to do with his new presidency? Well, that’s because he’s starting it up again and this time it’s more extreme.

Trump’s newest deportations began on January 23rd, 2025, exactly three days after being sworn into office. So far, only 8,276 immigrants have been arrested as of February 1st, 2025 but we still have three more years to go and every day U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is taking people out of their homes and away from their families. 

When people come to America, they come looking for better opportunities not only for themselves but for their families. Kids are brought here for better education and healthcare because it may not be offered in their country. They built well-established communities, places like Chinatown, El Centro De Oro, Germantown, Koreatown, and more. Shops that sell traditional foods and mementos are now deserted, bustling streets are barren, and every day more people are getting taken from places where they should be safe, which brings me to my next point.

Trump’s administration has reversed an old policy. This policy is what prohibited ICE from removing/arresting people without a warrant. But now ICE has permission to raid schools, hospitals, and places of worship. This is a large development when it comes to deportations in the U.S. While yes, other presidents have also had large deportation numbers during their presidency, none of them has gone as far as to completely reverse ICE’s policies which are directly there to keep things for the immigrants who are being directly affected. But now ICE can disrupt classrooms, and religious gatherings, and can even interrupt someone getting medical treatment if they so desire.

Alongside the deportations, Trump is doing other things to keep immigrants out of the country, shutting down the CBP which is one app that was used to help Migrants get into the U.S. legally, and also ending Birthright Citizenship.

Yes, Birthright Citizenship is also to be removed even though the 14th Amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Trump’s new order now makes it so that U.S.-born children of undocumented Immigrants will not be recognized as U.S. citizens. This order will only apply to people born after February 20th, 2025.

22 states have already sued Trump to stop this order from going into effect and Presidents of Latin American countries are denying the entry of deportation planes.

Despite all this pushback and disagreement from a large number of people in America, Trump and his administration continue to push for more deportations as the days go on. Well-populated Latino communities have already been seen as empty and every day is a constant threat and worry to people if they’re going to be taken away from their families and the lives they have built in America. It’s not just Latinos either. Asian and African Immigrants have also been on the rise of deportations. In Philadelphia, South Philly has been a known area for ICE to frequent due to its large population of Asian-American, African-American, and Latino communities.

ICE has even developed new methods of getting people out of their houses so they can arrest them. Pretending to be Ice cream trucks and particularly stationing them outside of homes with kids and schools.

This has been the cause of protests going on in certain states with large Latino populations due to the absurdity of ICE’s way of luring families out of their homes just to arrest them.

Every day more people are taken and well-established communities lose members and their culture as people are either taken back to their countries or dropped off wherever ICE thinks they belong.