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deportations
Trump Deportation Campaign Forcing Immigrants to Avoid Healthcare and Change Daily Routines
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” said one man. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
Nov 19, 2025
For people who have immigrated to the United States—regardless of whether they have legal status—life under the second Trump administration has provoked daily anxiety and fear—forcing many to make choices about whether it's safe to go to church services that once provided a sense of community, seek medical care, and send their children to school.
As federal immigration agents continued raiding communities in Charlotte, North Carolina—the latest target of the administration's mass deportation campaign—as well as other cities across the US, the New York Times/KFF poll released Tuesday gave a comprehensive look at how President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies have impacted both undocumented immigrants and people who have green cards and other legal documentation.
Nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants reported negative health impacts due to worries about being deported, separated from their families, or otherwise harmed due to their immigration status.
Health impacts they reported include problems sleeping or eating, worsening health conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and worsening anxiety or stress.
Immigrants with legal documentation also reported these impacts in large numbers, with 47% saying they have experienced health issues stemming from worries about Trump's policies. Nearly a third of naturalized citizens said the same.
A 34-year-old Colombian woman in New York said her family is "scared of going out."
“We’re getting depressed," she said. "We’re scared that they’ll separate us, they’ll mistreat us.”
While experiencing increased negative health impacts, immigrants have become more likely to avoid getting medical care—as viral videos have shown US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents making arrests at medical offices.
Under the Biden administration, ICE and other federal agents were barred from conducting immigration enforcement at sensitive locations like schools and hospitals, but Trump rescinded those limits.
Between 2023-25, the share of adult immigrants who reported skipping or delaying healthcare increased from 22% to 29%. One in five said it was due to immigration-related worries.
Nearly a third of parents also said they had delayed or avoided medical appointments for their children; the share rose to 43% for undocumented immigrant parents.
About half of all adult immigrants and nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants said they were "somewhat" or "very" concerned about healthcare providers sharing information with immigration enforcement officials.
Two years ago, about 26% of immigrants reported fears that they or a family member could be deported or detained, and that number has jumped to 41%.
One-third of noncitizen immigrants said they have begun avoiding aspects of everyday life, and nearly 60% of undocumented immigrants said the same.
"We have been the workforce in construction, restaurants, janitorial,” Ana Luna, an immigrant who has lived in Los Angeles with her family for nearly two decades, told the Times. “Now we have to run, hide, or stay inside. And it’s especially heartbreaking for our children.”
Luna told the Times that her youngest child's school had recently informed her that immigration enforcement was nearby.
“We are grateful for everything this country has given us and our children,” her husband, Gabriel Lorenzo, told the Times. “But the system has become downright cruel toward immigrants.”
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No Kings Rallies Count, But We Need Bigger and More Sustained Civil Resistance
Just as President Trump is racing to consolidate his power, millions more Americans must move quickly to stop him.
Oct 21, 2025
In the early 1770s, American colonists, upset at heavy-handed British rule, waged a fierce resistance campaign that made it immensely difficult for the British to govern. Boycotts of British goods and refusals to pay taxes were just a few of the ways they made life unbearable before tensions erupted into the Revolutionary War.
The successful civil rights movement of the 1960s was sparked by small groups of students, including John Lewis, who conducted lunch counter sit-ins, street marches, business boycotts, and other forms of nonviolent resistance to protest and eventually end segregation in the South.
And so it has gone in America: Campaigns for women’s voting rights and nuclear nonproliferation trace their beginnings to deliberate, tactical civil resistance.
Now, as America approaches its 250th anniversary, groups of people—in geographies from Boston to Baton Rouge—are beginning to launch a nationwide civil resistance movement. And just like the Vietnam War, it is against our own government.
The president cannot consolidate power without airplanes to handle his deportation flights, banks that finance his detention centers, and a media that spreads his misinformation and squelches truth.
President Donald Trump and his loyalists are moving at jet speed to install an authoritarian government that is stamping out free speech, voting rights, civil rights, and other core foundations of our democracy.
They are also dismembering federal agencies that backstop science, healthcare, environmental protection, and a well-functioning economy. The protracted government shutdown, which has federal workers being furloughed and fired, is deepening the damage.
It is time to rise up again. We should not stand idle as our political institutions unravel. The ship is sinking rapidly, and it may not be salvageable a year from now. Even if the midterm elections bring more political resistance, much of the damage will have been done.
So it is up to us, average Americans to resist. But resistance needs strategy, training, and unwavering commitment to exercise that power. Every day. Every hour.
And in small but encouraging ways, it is happening again. One Million Rising, a national civil resistance movement launched in July by the nonprofit group Indivisible, is growing in numbers and impact. More than 300,000 trained volunteers are organizing protests, sit-ins, and other types of nonviolent interference aimed at businesses, the media, and other entities supporting the president’s policies.
The strategy is less about broad-based street demonstrations, such as Saturday’s No Kings! protests, and more about sharply focused, continuous collective action to undermine key pillars of support that the administration is relying on. By chipping away at vital institutions that uphold their power, the president’s castle of sand will erode and eventually tumble. The president cannot consolidate power without airplanes to handle his deportation flights, banks that finance his detention centers, and a media that spreads his misinformation and squelches truth.
We’re seeing positive progress, with the biggest focus being on Trump-friendly businesses.
Companies that are caving to the president’s pressure while getting favorable policy treatment are facing louder protests and boycotts.
When Disney and its ABC affiliate suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s show in September over his remarks about Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting, consumers quickly responded. Disney’s streaming apps lost more than 1 million paid subscribers in a matter of days. The show was quickly restored—a major victory for free speech.
And there is Avelo Airlines, a budget commercial airline that flies out of dozens of US cities, including Bradley and New Haven airports in Connecticut. It is facing growing resistance over its contract to handle deportation flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In New Haven, the teacher’s union, city government, and consumers have all come out publicly against the airline, calling for boycotts and an end to sponsorship deals. Similar protests are underway at Bradley and other airports in Baltimore, Atlanta, and across California.
Protesters are also targeting local governments deemed as being overly cooperative with the administration’s aggressive immigrant crackdown. Just this month, after loud protests inside and outside of City Hall, the Holyoke City Council narrowly rejected a resolution declaring that Holyoke is not a sanctuary city and would fully comply with all federal laws. Supporters said the resolution would protect Holyoke’s federal funding.
Councilor Patti Devine, who cast the decisive vote, said she planned to support the resolution but changed her mind after Latino, youth, and trans residents spoke in opposition.
These wins are surely important, but bigger, broader resistance efforts are urgently needed.
The movement needs more people. A lot more people. And it needs them every day. While it is encouraging that an estimated 7 million protesters participated in the No Kings! rallies on Saturday, most are not engaging in the more challenging and time-consuming resistance campaigns that the moment calls for.
So how many people do we need? One academic who has studied civil resistance movements globally, Erica Chenoweth, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, has developed what she calls the 3.5% rule. Chenoweth’s research of hundreds of campaigns over the last century shows that it takes around 3.5% of a population actively participating in civil resistance to ensure serious changes.
That means about 12 million people in America. No matter how you cut it, we’re not even close.
And we need to build these numbers quickly.
Just as President Trump is racing to consolidate his power, millions more Americans must move quickly to stop him.
A good first step is to sign up for One Million Rising and listen to its three online training sessions. They can also join local community groups that are already working on civil resistance campaigns in their communities. Or they can start a new community group.
It’s time.
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Outrage Over How ICE Tricked Newlyweds Speaks to 'Broader Pattern' Under Trump Agenda
"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer. "They’re following the process... Yet they’re being disappeared."
Oct 01, 2025
Congresswoman Judy Chu was among many expressing anger on Tuesday evening over the Trump administration's detention of Barbara Gomes Marques, a film director who was detained by immigration agents last month after attending a "properly scheduled" meeting regarding her green card and is now facing the "very real possibility" of deportation.
Marques' experience, said Chu (D-Calif.), "reflects a broader pattern under [President Donald] Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel."
Chu spoke out on the case after Marques' husband, Tucker May, brought attention to their experience on social media.
The couple, who was married just last year, went to the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles in September to meet with immigration officers regarding Marques' green card. She arrived in the US on a tourist visa seven years ago and has worked as a film director. She has no criminal record. As the libertarian CATO Institute reported in June, 65% of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first months of Trump's second term have no criminal convictions, despite the administration's repeated claims that its mass deportation and detention operation is aimed at cracking down on violent criminals.
May and Marques were accompanied by their lawyer at the meeting, which they believed was a step toward Marques becoming a US citizen and were told was "successful." But after the meeting, an agent told the couple Marques needed to accompany them down a hallway to make a copy of her passport due to a broken copier in the office.
"Once separated from her legal counsel, she was arrested," wrote May on a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for the couple's legal fees.
"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself."
ICE agents told the couple they were detaining Marques due to a missed court date in 2019; Marques and May have said they did not receive a letter about the court date and were not informed about it until she was detained.
May told reporters that ICE agents "put her in hand shackles and in leg shackles, and around the waist as well, like she's some hardened criminal. She had tears streaming down her face, and she told me one of the ICE agents pulled out his cellphone, laughing, and took a selfie."
May wrote that "the officer used the excuse of a broken copier to trick her into walking away from her lawyer," making it possible for his wife to be taken the Adelanto ICE Processing Center nearly 100 miles away. From there, Marques was sent to a facility in Arizona, and then to a "staging facility" in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Friends of the couple reported on their GoFundMe page Tuesday that a court had "officially acknowledged a motion to reopen Barbara’s case," stopping ICE from deporting her while a judge reviews the case. But the couple's lawyer, Marcelo Gondim, told CBS News he believes Louisiana has been planned as Marques' last stop before being deported.
"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself," said Gondim, who filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from deporting Marques. "Knowing that she's married to a US citizen, she has a legal way to become a permanent resident in a matter of months, if they just gave her a chance to find her paperwork."
Chu said she was "demanding that ICE follow the law" and emphasized that "unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique."
As Common Dreams reported last week, an Ecuadorian woman, Monica Moreta-Galarza, was thrown to the ground by an immigration agent at a courthouse in New York City as she pleaded with him not to arrest her husband, who had attended a court hearing as part of the family's legal application for asylum. The agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza was briefly suspended, but returned to work days later.
In July, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) filed a class action lawsuit accusing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) of "ongoing collusion" in which the agencies have directed government attorneys to request the dismissal of immigrants' legal cases at court hearings they were ordered to attend. Once their cases have been dismissed, immigrants have been arrested and detained by ICE agents waiting at courthouses.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student organizer and green-card holder, was also arrested by masked federal agents earlier this year after arriving at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had been directed to go to complete his US citizenship application.
"People scheduled for hearings at immigration courts across the country continue to feel as though as they are walking into a trap set by the Trump administration," said the NIJC last week. "We must fight to save due process and keep telling these stories."
Marques' friends and family called on the public to send "an absolute storm of calls and emails" to lawmakers in Louisiana, demanding that her deportation be halted.
"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer this week. "They’re following the process. They’re doing everything the right way. Yet they’re being disappeared. Barbara Marques: Say her name. Demand accountability. Help bring her home."
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