It may seem like a change in President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement, but it’s not quite that.
Perhaps it’s a suspension — hopefully a permanent one — of overkill. The word choice is intentional.
The shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens protesting enforcement operations in Minneapolis by federal agents was beyond outrageous, not to mention the mayhem faced by immigrants themselves.
Public opposition has been building, according to various polls, but it’s a shame it took killings to reach what may be a breaking point, even for some Republicans, about the violent swings the Trump administration is taking in the name of immigration enforcement.
The deaths and injustices seemed to have had an impact. So have the courts. Administration border czar Tom Homan said last week the surge in Minneapolis is ending, while National Guard troops have been pulled from some cities where they were deployed by Trump.
Kristi Noem, secretary of Homeland Security, has been emphasizing drug interdiction successes, as she did at the San Diego border Thursday, and not so much the overall immigration crackdown.
But the reality is election-year politics and a funding holdup by Democrats and a small number of Republicans are perhaps responsible for bringing us to this point. It’s not that most voters don’t want immigration laws enforced, they just don’t like the way Trump is doing it.
Make no mistake. The president’s overreaching mass deportation policy will continue. Tens of billions are being spent, thousands of agents are being hired and industrial warehouses across the country are being lined up for detention centers.
The manner in which that is carried out may depend on whether Democrats can gain a House majority in November. It will be interesting to see whether the extreme strategies that have triggered public outcry will be shaved off immigration enforcement operations in the meantime.
It may be instructive to look at what has happened in San Diego compared with Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago, where there have been provoking incursions by federal agents and National Guard troops.
Early on, it looked like San Diego would similarly be a target of military-like operations, which are guaranteed to bring out protesters and lead to street confrontations with agents. In May, heavily armed federal agents conducted a high-profile immigration raid at the Buona Forchetta restaurant.
But there were few, if any, similar incidents after that. However, arrests at courthouses and federal offices involving immigrants showing up for hearings and appointments made national news. There were more than a few ugly incidents, and San Diego religious leaders began accompanying immigrants to those facilities.
Still, there was a change in tone, but not intensity. From January 2025 to mid-October, Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the San Diego field office made 4,934 arrests, compared with 764 in all of 2024, according to Alexandra Mendoza of The San Diego Union-Tribune. That’s an increase of nearly 650 percent.
Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading critic of Trump and the overall immigration enforcement, noted the difference during a visit to the San Diego-Otay Mesa border area earlier this month.
He told CalMatters the local increase happened “without the fanfare of what you’re seeing in your living room and on your screen happening in places like Minneapolis.”
Yet only 25 percent of people arrested between May and mid-October had criminal convictions, compared with more than 60 percent in the same months of the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency, according to CalMatters.
Recently, there’s been another round of journalistic takes on President Barak Obama’s big deportation numbers — he was called “Deporter in Chief” by immigration advocates — and how that compares with Trump’s record.
Let’s not rehash all that here. But while the Obama administration did purport to focus on undocumented immigrants with criminal records, many people who were simply undocumented were sent out of the country or returned at the border.
There were many differences, not just in style, though that was a notable one. Deportation was not a central component of Obama’s administration, where it is foundational for Trump. Obama didn’t advertise it and, in fact, he called for comprehensive immigration reform. Trump does the opposite on both counts.
Trump regularly makes racially-tinged, disparaging comments about immigrants. Obama did not.
It’s worth pointing out that the once-chaotic border area is now largely calm, with border-crossing apprehensions down dramatically because people largely aren’t trying to cross.
Meanwhile, Newsom also lauded California’s collaboration with other agencies’ efforts to combat drug and human trafficking, among other criminal enterprises, along with border security — not unlike Noem, odd as it may seem.
Despite state and local laws restricting law enforcement from assisting immigration enforcement, California and San Diego agencies continue to work with the federal government on task forces aimed at combating cross-border crime and protecting public safety. They receive grants through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
This is what people want: a focus on crime, criminals being prosecuted and deported, a secure border and, by varying degrees, limits on immigration. The Trump administration’s policy is much broader than that and sometimes views legalities as mere inconveniences.
“ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” Judge Patrick Schiltz, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote.
Immigration agents should not be deployed like Trump’s personal militia. Many no doubt try to do their jobs within the boundaries of the law. Others seem to act like thugs on a wilding binge.
Democrats have tended to downplay deportation issues when one of them is in charge. Some call for the abolition of ICE, which may play well with the base but probably doesn’t help them in the long run.
What they should do is keep pressing for the reforms they have proposed. The list includes requiring agents to obtain judicial warrants to enter someone’s property, prohibiting them from wearing masks, demanding they wear some form of identification, dress in common uniforms and adhere to widely accepted use-of-force standards.
In other words, act like a professional law enforcement agency.
What they said
Sam Stein (@samstein), Bulwark/MSNBC.
“Just to be clear: The news here is that the Trump DOJ actually sought to indict and arrest six sitting Dem lawmakers for saying something legally and factually true about unlawful orders. The failure before the Grand Jury is secondary.”