Trump sows fear among migrants with shock-and-awe deportation campaign

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. President Trump’s immigration directives are clearing the path for officials to step up deportations. But the White House’s flashy public-relations campaign around its deportation work might be just as effective, as it unsettles immigrant communities across the country.

Trump is marshaling federal powers from the Pentagon to the Drug Enforcement Administration to make a crackdown at the border and aggressive interior enforcement the first priority for his second term. In the first week of his administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 5,000 migrants in the U.S., agency data show. ICE arrested approximately 310 people a day during former President Joe Biden’s last year in office.

Newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, wearing raid attire and an ICE vest, recorded a video on Tuesday with agents making arrests in New York City. “We’re getting the dirt bags off these streets," she said. The administration has said it is targeting people with criminal backgrounds, but hundreds of migrants in the U.S.

illegally who didn’t have a criminal record have been arrested, ICE data show. “People are keeping their kids home from school," said Gale Brewer, a New York city council member representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “They’re afraid to go to work.

They’re just scared in general." Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said moves such as a raid in Newark on Jan. 23 that drew national attention to three arrests, were designed to send a message. “It’s about creating the sense of awe, the sense of fear, to send a message," he said.