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deportations
How a Newfound Love of Quotas Drove Trump's Military Invasion of Los Angeles
The administration's shock troops are not going over after criminals, but rather hard-working people nationwide simply going about their lives as valued members of their communities.
Jun 10, 2025
There’s a little-discussed word behind the escalating Gestapo-style abductions and deportations of ordinary working people, many longtime residents, that has produced increasing confrontations and mass protests across the U.S., most prominently in Los Angeles in recent days.
The term is quota. Yes, a word long viewed by the right as wicked as socialism or, more recently, woke.
From affirmative action to diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI), and other social justice aims that sometimes include numeric percentages, quotas, are intended to redress centuries of racial, gender, and other discriminatory practices in employment, education, politics, and other sectors of society. Such quotas are designed to shift societal behaviors to create opportunities for historically marginalized people.
But those goals have repeatedly been a target for eradication by federal and state governments and the U.S. Supreme Court, and not just from conservatives. Under President Trump, purging any vestige of DEI has been the cover for wholesale assaults on federal employment, university practices, and elsewhere. It coincides with the white supremacist dream of reversing demographic changes in the U.S. and protecting white and far-right political, social, and economic control.
Yet a quota is no longer an anathema when it comes to their own right-wing policies, as is now playing out in the most draconian and inhumane perversion of immigration policy and “border security” in recent history.
Frustrated by what he viewed as a slow pace in deportations through the first four months of his reign, Trump pushed his top immigration staff to drastically ratchet up daily arrests of migrants to reach a flashy goal of one million deportations in his first year. That meant a steroid level explosion from an average of 660 arrests a day to a mandate–a quota–of 3,000 per day.
Marching orders in late May went to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Department of Homeland Security minister Kristi Noem, and Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement border czar Tom Homan.
All three are hardline Trump devotees who have relished carrying out their daily abductions in the most cruel manner possible–dispatching teams of masked agents roughly kidnapping lone individuals on the street, pulling parents away from their children, students on their way to school or volleyball practice, breaking windows in cars to drag out targets.
It all fit the demeanor for Trump’s secret police architects, especially the fanatical Miller, Trump’s anti-immigration policy guru. A man aptly described by ABC correspondent Terry Moran as “richly endowed by hate” whose “hatreds are his spiritual nourishment,” fueled not by his brains but his “bile.” And when Moran’s tweet, following the heavy-handed mass raids in Los Angeles and Trump’s autocratic commandeering of the California National Guard to assault the mass protests, prompted Trump’s machine to demand ABC fire Moran, ABC predictably caved and suspended him. Because that’s what major media frequently do on the road to dictatorship.
Trump defended his Los Angeles militarized order as a response to the supposed “invasion” of that city by undocumented immigrants. The real invasion, of course, was the mass deportation arrests of ordinary working people and students, followed by the dispatch of federally commissioned troops, over the objection of state and city officials, to enforce it and quell dissent.
The high-profile Los Angeles showdown symbolizes a significant switch in Trump’s deportation tactics driven by his newfound affection for a quota. It would also require a full repudiation of who Trump had defined as the focus for his deportation plans, outlined in frequent racist demagogy, such as labeling legal Haitian immigrants as eating pet cats and dogs. In a rally in Dayton, Ohioh Trump insisted “I don’t know if you call them (immigrants) people,” Trump said. “In some cases, they’re not people.”
Trump’s campaign rhetoric led many voters into expecting he would focus on deporting immigrants accused of violent and other dangerous crimes, like murder, sexual assault, domestic violence, drunk driving, and child pornography, many of whom are often already in custody.
Over the past decade, reports the Texas Tribune, 70 percent of ICE arrests were “handoffs by local police or federal prisons, according to an analysis by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.” Even with passage of the repressive Laken Riley Act in January, with the votes of 48 House Democrats and 12 Senate Democrats, the category was stretched to include lesser crimes, such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting
But to meet Trump’s demanding quotas, Miller, Homan, and company had to reach far broader, to immigrants with no record, using larger teams of masked federal agents to raid workplaces like factories, restaurants, construction sites, as well as schools and housing centers. The use of unidentified, masked, heavily armed agents is intended to terrorize and intimidate not just the undocumented, but anyone who stands in their way, especially for people who have already witnessed the shredding of legal due process rights.
The New York Times reported how masked agents stormed a student housing complex under construction in Tallahassee, Fl. abducting dozens of migrants, and seizing 15 people working on a flood control project in New Orleans. Massive raids in Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshires sparked vehement local opposition. And when heavily armed, masked agents in tactical gear raided two San Diego restaurants putting 15 workers in handcuffs, scores of outraged neighborhood residents came out to confront them.
Suddenly, people who had been living and working peacefully for years or decades in the U.S.–janitors, housekeepers, dishwashers, factory, construction, nursing home, laundry, landscape and farm workers–were subject to large scale arrest by heavily armed swat teams in scenes conjuring up images from every dictatorship of the past century. The opposition messaging should clearly identify the everyday people who are being kidnapped and the tactics that are being employed to convey a message of unleashed, unaccountable autocratic power.
Trump’s brown shirt campaign has also sabotaged long-standing immigration system protections, such as courthouses, arresting non-citizens properly showing up for scheduled court hearings. And they were pressuring judges to quickly dismiss cases to more easily avoid due process procedures for quicker deportation, all of which ignores the long-term consequences of discouraging undocumented people from fulfilling their legal judicial expectations. Overall, the quotas remove any incentive to ensure all persons, whether documented or not, are guaranteed the legal rights stipulated by the Constitution’s 5th and 14th Amendments.
“They are desperate to reach a certain number of arrests per day. And the only way they can find non-citizens easily and quickly is to go to the courthouses, where they [immigrants] are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director for the American Immigration Council. “This administration came into office with the illusion that they had been given a broad mandate to effectuate an aggressive immigration enforcement agenda, and they are doubling down now on that agenda.”
“Public polling,” Gupta added, “is showing decreasing support for Trump’s immigration agenda, as Americans wake up to the reality that mass deportation means arrests of our neighbors and friends, masked agents in our communities and people afraid to go to work and show up to school, in ways that undermine our local economies.”
That’s the danger Trump is creating for what for not only his signature issue, but also a longtime fundamental theme for Trumpism and the far right. Even in rural communities. One such example being a Missouri county that voted by 80 percent for Trump where Carol Mayorga, originally from Hong Kong, who had lived peacefully for 20 years, raising a family and making friends in a local pancake and waffle house. Her arrest sparked a vocal backlash and broad public support.
In red states and blue states, many Trump supporters watching neighbors and friends arrested, even deported, and their communities militarized and invaded by images they may have only seen on movie screens, are increasingly feeling betrayed.
“This is not what we voted for,” proclaimed Republican Florida State Sen. Ileana Garcia, founder of Latinas for Trump. “As the state senator who represents her district and the daughter of Cuban refugees, who are now just as American, if not more so, than Stephen Miller, I am deeply disappointed by these actions…This is not what we voted for. I have always supported Trump through thick and thin. However, this is unacceptable and inhumane.”Keep ReadingShow Less
'Heartbreaking': 4-Year-Old Who Came to US Legally Could Die Within Days If Deported
"It's cruel and inexcusable," said Rep. Judy Chu.
May 27, 2025
Yet another Trump administration deportation case is sparking outrage: This time, a 4-year-old Mexican girl and her parents face expulsion, despite the family coming to the United States legally and the child's risk of death if she loses the medical care she is receiving in California.
The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday shared the story of the family, which came to the United States on humanitarian grounds in 2023: the young girl, identified by her initials, S.G.V.; her mom, 28-year-old Deysi Vargas, who is also Mexican; and her 34-year-old dad, who is from Colombia.
They have been living in Bakersfield, and S.G.V. has been receiving care for her short bowel syndrome at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). However, the family received a letter last month stating that their legal status had been terminated and urging them to leave the United States of their own accord, to avoid deportation.
While spokespeople for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as well as CHLA declined to comment, the Times reported on a letter written by Dr. John Arsenault at the family's request:
If there is an interruption in her daily nutrition system, called Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN), the doctor wrote, "this could be fatal within a matter of days."
"As such, patients on home TPN are not allowed to leave the country because the infrastructure to provide TPN or provide immediate intervention if there is a problem with IV access depends on our program's utilization of U.S.-based healthcare resources and does not transfer across borders," Arsenault wrote.
"This is a textbook example of medical need," said the family's attorney, Rebecca Brown of the pro bono legal firm Public Counsel, who petitioned for continuation of their temporary humanitarian legal status. "This child will die and there's no sense for that to happen. It would just be a cruel sacrifice."
Readers of the reporting quickly called out U.S. President Donald Trump and other key officials in his administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, who was behind the family separation policy from Trump's first term.
To Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem and the other ghouls overseeing Trump's draconian deportation policy, a child dying would probably go down in their diary as a "good outcome." www.latimes.com/california/s...
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— Charles Idelson (@cidelson.bsky.social) May 27, 2025 at 12:30 PM
"Heartbreaking: A 4-year-old came here legally with her family for lifesaving care. Yet Trump still seeks to deport her despite doctors warning she could die. It's cruel and inexcusable," said Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-Calif.), whose district is in Los Angeles County.
Adrian Carrasquillo, who writes the immigration-focused newsletter "Huddled Masses" at The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative outlet, stressed that "this is being done in our name."
The Trump administration has provoked legal battles and intense scrutiny for deporting various people in recent months, including multiple children who are U.S. citizens—among them, a 4-year-old cancer patient.
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Maryland Lawmaker Denied Access to Abrego García During El Salvador Visit
The Supreme Court ordered the White House to facilitate Kilmar Abrego García's return to the United States more than a month ago.
May 27, 2025
"If there is nothing to hide, cut the crap," said a Maryland congressman late Monday after being denied a visit with his constituent, Kilmar Abrego García, who is being held in a prison in El Salvador after being wrongly expelled by the Trump administration to the Central American country.
Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Democrat, said he had made contact with the Salvadoran ambassador before making the trip to El Salvador and had made a formal request to see Abrego García—more than a month after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to "facilitate" the Maryland resident's return to the United States.
"We came here to visit him today, and now they're telling us we've got to go all the way back to San Salvador to get a permit," said Ivey. "That's ridiculous... They knew we were coming, they knew why we were coming, and they know we have the right to do this."
Abrego García, a Salvadoran national with no criminal record, entered the U.S. without authorization in 2011 and had been living with his wife and children and working as a sheet metal worker in Maryland.
He was one of more than 100 migrants who were swiftly expelled to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in March under a $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
He was accused of being a member of the gang MS-13, which Abrego García's family has denied. The Trump administration based its actions on an accusation from an anonymous police informant who said in 2019 that Abrego García's Chicago Bulls cap was indicative of his gang membership after he was detained for loitering. That year, a judge ruled that Abrego García should not be deported to his home country because he had a credible fear of torture by a local gang.
The White House has spread misinformation about Abrego García, including an image that was edited to make it appear like his tattoos signified MS-13 membership.
Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis said her repeated efforts to get the Trump administration to disclose information about Abrego García's case has been "an exercise in utter frustration."
Department of Justice lawyers told the judge that details about the case are protected under "state secrets" privileges.
Xinis called on the government to provide legal reasoning for invoking those privileges and said she would issue an official order.
Administration officials have alternately claimed they have no way of returning him to the U.S. after he was deported due to an "administrative error," and Bukele has said the same. But Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. questioned a Department of Justice lawyer earlier this month about President Donald Trump's claim that he could bring Abrego García back to the U.S. with a phone call.
Abrego García was initially sent to CECOT, which is notorious for its poor conditions and reports of torture and physical abuse, but just before U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) visited him in April, he was moved to a lower-security prison.
Ivey said Monday that he had planned to assess the conditions of the facility during his visit, noting the Democrats in Congress have not received information about how U.S. taxpayer dollars are being spent to house Abrego García.
"We need to get that," Ivey said in a press briefing. "We've got the power in the purse. We've got a constitutional obligation to make sure that money is being used in the right way, but we can't figure that out if we don't even know how much is being spent."
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