Trump ran on mass deportation. Mass deportation inherently requires removing a lot of hard working good people against their will because they crossed a geographic line they weren’t supposed to. If you voted for him thinking he would only remove criminals, then you didn’t pay enough objective attention.
But, Trump is doing more than that. He is violating due process–a basic right to all people. He is forcing a mass of people into detention centers where it is difficult for their family and lawyers to reach them, and where conditions are sometimes abysmal. Trump is using troops and law enforcement to do demonstrations to strike fear.
The militarization of criminal justice can lead to the end of democracy and basic rights.
The administration is actively making it more difficult for those accused of immigration violations to get a lawyer. They are sending police to lawyers’ houses apparently to intimidate them. They are making student loan repayment more difficult for lawyers who defend immigrants.
Masked men who don’t identify themselves and force you into custody is not how democracies do law enforcement.
Trump has purged parts of the military and replaced them with unqualified sycophants. Instead of lawyers telling Trump that what he wants to do is illegal so he can’t do it, this term he has people finding excuses for him to do undemocratic things.
“Advocacy groups say more than 100 cruise ship crew members have been deported in recent months, and they’re not being shown the evidence against them or given any due process.”
If Trump successfully destroys the Fed’s independence, he will have eliminated the country’s ability to manage the economy with limited influence by short-term election cycles.
Israel hits hospital and kills five journalists, then says they will investigate what happened.
Trump is preparing to send the national guard to more cities. The national guard is not designed to enforce crime. Trump focuses on cities run by Democrats even though several high crime cities are run by Republicans. If Trump mostly or only sends troops to “crack down on crime” in Democrat run cities, that indicates that this is political intimidation and U.S. democracy is dead.
“The overcrowding, combined with negligence and malevolence, has led to inevitable abuses that are too large to ignore or deny.
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In one case reported to the senator’s office, a woman in ICE custody “was pregnant and bled for days before facility staff would take her to a hospital. Once she was there, she was reportedly left in a room, alone, to miscarry without water or medical assistance, for over 24 hours.”
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“We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur who was detained by ICE this spring, told the researchers.
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“There was a dude, he passed out. He was crying for his medicine for like two or three days,” A.S. says. “They didn’t give him his medicine until he finally passed out, right before they were gonna put him on the plane.”
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These sorts of abuses aren’t exclusive to the Trump administration; they’re a feature of mass detention. During the Biden administration, Reason obtained whistleblower audio recordings from a tent camp for migrant youths inside the Fort Bliss Army base in Texas. In the recordings, officials frankly discussed filthy conditions, lack of medical care, and inappropriate staff contact with minors.
The Trump administration’s reaction, though, has not been to slow down its deportation efforts, but to supercharge them. The administration awarded a $238 million contract in July to build and operate the largest immigrant detention center in the country at Fort Bliss.”
“An investigation by ProPublica has revealed nearly 50 instances of officers shattering windows while conducting immigration-related arrests in the last six months. Although not comprehensive and hard to verify without government statistics, only eight occurrences were found in the decade preceding Trump’s return to office. The uptick in window destruction coincides with growing uneasiness around how federal agents conduct themselves—and how aggressive behavior may even be rewarded within the Trump administration.
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American citizens have also been implicated during these forceful arrests. In a since-deleted Facebook Live video, agents pulled over Jennifer Gribben, a U.S. citizen, and her boyfriend Martin Rivera (ProPublica did not note his citizenship status), and told them they were looking for a fugitive named Garcia. Officers then smashed the car’s window to arrest them. Gribben said in a Facebook post that she was hit in the head by officers and that Rivera suffered a broken arm. She was later charged with resisting arrest and third-degree assault, to which she pleaded not guilty.”
“Currently, parole has been revoked for a portion of the 8,100 Afghans who entered the U.S. through the southern border using the Customs and Border Protection’s now defunct One app, and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was revoked from around 11,700 Afghans in July. Additionally, Afghans who arrived in the U.S. during Operation Allies Refuge in August 2021 were granted two years of humanitarian parole. Their parole was extended in 2023 but is soon set to expire, which will leave an unknown number of parolees in precarious legal standing.
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In late 2024, Nasrin, who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, fled to the U.S. to escape her abusive ex-husband, who sought to marry her daughter to a member of the Taliban after the terrorist group’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Upon arrival in the U.S., Nasrin, along with her daughter and two of her sons, was placed in ICE detention. Nasrin and her daughter were released, but both of her sons remain in ICE facilities. Nasrin “worries a lot” about the unknown future of her sons.
Former interpreter Mahmud, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, entered the U.S. in 2014 through the SIV program. His brother, Fawad, applied for an SIV through work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and fled to Mexico after his half-brother was murdered. After waiting eight months in Mexico for a CBP One app appointment, Fawad crossed the border in March 2025 and was immediately detained. ICE rejected his claim for asylum and now insists Fawad must be deported to Afghanistan.
Mahmud reports that Fawad has not been granted a credible fear interview and is being moved to different ICE facilities around the country, which makes it difficult for his family to acquire expensive legal representation. Mahmud says Fawad’s depression and other health issues are “getting worse in detention centers.””