Trump’s anti-immigration strategy is leaving millions of people at risk

Each day, as ICE trucks roam menacingly throughout cities and towns, one thing remains abundantly clear to millions of immigrants and advocates: ICE is on a racist and illegal manhunt to detain anyone they scapegoat as a threat, disregarding due process, individual freedoms, and a concern for human rights.

In the U.S., there are 11 million undocumented immigrants, encompassing 6.3 million households and 3.3% of the total U.S. population. A majority of undocumented immigrants come from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and India. Additionally, about two-thirds of all undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for ten years or more.

A majority of undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. through those U.S. Mexico border and a majority of these migrants are asylum seekers, who have the right under US and international law to arrive at an international border and ask for protection against significant risk in their home countries. Almost 40% of undocumented immigrants entered through legal means and overstayed their visas.

While many right wing rhetoric slams undocumented migrants for not coming here the ‘legal’ or ‘correct way’, it is incredibly difficult to immigrate to the U.S. through legal means due to overwhelming immigration agencies and a limited number of visas and green cards issued.

In 2021, for instance, an estimated 32 million people began the process to apply to legally immigrate to the United States and only 900,000 were given permission to enter the U.S. legally. All asylum seekers have the right to immigration protections under the law, however, in 2024 there was a backlog of 1.5 million asylum cases waiting to be heard in courts.

A lot of right wing rhetoric falsely accuses undocumented immigrants of wanting to come into the U.S. and ‘steal American jobs‘ and ‘commit crime‘. In reality, immigrants have strengthened the U.S. economy and workforce.

Studies have shown that undocumented immigration has not increased violent crime and immigrants of any status are less likely to be involved in violent crime than native-born Americans.

Beyond this, the harmful rhetoric being used to describe undocumented immigrants overlooks the real push factors that prompt millions of people, including men, women, families, and unaccompanied minors, to attempt the risky trek across the U.S.-Mexico border each year. These push factors include pervasive gang violence, high crime rates, gender inequality, sexual violence, extreme poverty, political corruption, and environmental degradation.

It’s not as simple as just trekking across a border, migrants often face imminent risks to their safety when crossing the border, and unfortunately some migrants have died due to drowning, extreme heat, dehydration, dangerous smuggling operations, and injuries relating to falling from border walls.

Unaccompanied minors, who are children under the age of 18 crossing the border without a parent or guardian and without legal status, face heightened risks, including risk of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. The Congressional Research Service estimated that a whopping 75-80% of unaccompanied minors arriving in the U.S.-Mexico border victims have experienced victimization of human trafficking.

Despite these serious risks, millions of undocumented migrants have made the dangerous trek into the United States in hopes of personal safety, basic freedoms, and economic opportunities.

Since his inauguration, Trump has hardened his stance on undocumented immigrants, saying that he plans to carry out ‘the largest domestic deportation in U.S. history.‘

The administration has a clear and is especially fueled by its animosity and scapegoating of immigrants, with Donald Trump, a person who was convicted of 34-felony counts and was found liable for rape, scapegoating the 11 million undocumented women, men, and children as ‘rapists’ and ‘criminals’.

Trump’s harmful rhetoric has translated into his egregious policies that leave millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. at risk of detainment, familial separation, detention, and torture.

Since the “Protecting American People Against Invasion” order was enacted, ICE has conducted hundreds of raids and has arrested more than 65,000 undocumented immigrants, and is holding around 59,000 undocumented immigrants in gruesome detention facilities across the country.

While ICE previously claimed to only arrest those who have criminal histories or appear to pose significant threats to public safety, ICE is now arresting undocumented immigrants regardless of their criminal history.

‘If somebody is here illegally, whether or not they’ve committed crimes, there is that possibility that they could be arrested,’ Sam Olson, the enforcement and removal operations officer for ICE in Chicago, told NBC News.

In fact, data from CNN indicates that less than 10% of immigrants taken into ICE custody have any serious criminal convictions. Furthermore, ICE raids are now taking place in sanctuary cities, which are cities that adopted provisions to protect undocumented immigrants from being arrested by ICE. These cities include Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Trump threatened to halt funding to states and localities that don’t cooperate with his immigration plans. Additionally, Trump revoked policies that formerly prohibited ICE from entering ‘sensitive places’ including at or near schools, places of worship, courthouses, or hospitals.

Now, with sanctuary laws being violated, there’s virtually nowhere safe for undocumented immigrants to turn.

Inside detention centers 

If ICE detains an individual, they are often placed in detention centers while waiting for trial or deportation.

Detention centers are known to have deplorable conditions, including physical and sexual abuse, medical neglect, overcrowding, punitive use of solitary confinement, lack of access to legal counsel, as well as racist and discriminatory treatment. Since January, there’s been a 48% increase in detention centers resulting in an all-time high of 59,000 immigrants in these facilities.

According to a WIRED investigation that looked into 911 calls coming from ten of the country’s largest detention centers, at least 60% of the facilities had reported serious pregnancy complications, suicide attempts, or sexual assault allegations. Under this new presidency, Trump has begun to deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot mega-prison.

In March 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran citizen who lives in the U.S. and is protected against deportation by a federal order, was wrongfully detained and sent to the Salvadoran prison. Abrego Garcia reported he was subject to ‘severe bearings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture‘ at the facility.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration opened a new detention center, nicknamed,  ‘Alligator Alcatraz,‘ in the Florida Everglades. This new facility has faced massive backlash due to the inhospitable nature of its location, which has extremely hot and humid summer, regular flooding, and wildlife including alligators and venomous snakes. The facility’s subpar infrastructure also has massive tents that hold immigrants in cages with multiple bunk beds.

Democratic lawmakers who tried to enter the new detention center to inspect its grounds were denied entry to the facility due to ‘safety concerns‘. The lawmakers said in a statement ‘This is a blatant abuse of power and an attempt to conceal human rights violations from the public eye,’ according to CNN.

On May 31, an 18-year-old high school student who immigrated to the U.S. from Brazil at 7-years-old, got arrested by ICE while he was on his way to volleyball practice in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Authorities indicated ICE was looking for his father who allegedly has a habit of driving at reckless speeds through residential areas.

The student, Marcelo Gomez de Silva, was thrown in a detention center with ‘humiliating’ conditions, including being forced to sleep on a cement floor with a metallic blanket. Gomez de Silva also reported that many of the men with him in the detention facility didn’t speak English and had no idea why they were being detained.

Gomez de Silva recalled an officer asking if he knew why he was being arrested, to which he replied, ‘I told her, ma’am, I was 7 years old. I don’t know nothing about that stuff,’ he recalled. ‘I don’t understand how it works’, according to CNN. Gomez de Silva was released about a week later on a $2,000 bond.

The increasing power of ICE has also prompted racial profiling and accidental detainments.

On June 3, Elzon Lemus, who was born and raised in Brentwood in Long Island, New York, was on the way to work when his vehicle was pulled over by ICE agents. Lemus then asked why he was being stopped and the ICE agent replied, ‘Cause you look like someone I’m looking for,’ and then demanded that he sees Lemus’s ID, according to CBS News.

When Lemus refused to show his ID, which he was in his right to do since the agents did not have reasonable suspicion or probable cause, Lemus was detained on the street for an hour. In response to this scary incident, Lemus told CBS News, ‘I am a victim because of my race.’

Junior Dioses, a lawful permanent resident in Utah with a green card who’s been living in the U.S. for 20 years, was mistakenly detained by ICE and spent a grueling 50 days in federal custody.

Dioses described the conditions of the detention center to Fox 13 Salt Lake City saying, ‘It’s really bad inside. It’s 90 people asleep there, and it’s a lot of loud in there, there’s people fighting. It’s crazy. I don’t like it.’

The latest statistics from ICE show that at the end of June 2025, agents had detained 57,861 people. Of these people, 41,495 (71.7%) had no criminal convictions. That includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement, but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.