Trump’s first week back in office delivered what he does best: dystopian showmanship.
Photos of deportation flights released with glee; shots of the military deployed to the border to handle an “invasion” at its lowest levels in years. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) publishing on social media numbers of arrests and deportations (not that much greater than under the previous administration) like a scorecard. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with a glamour shot in the New York Post doing a ride-along raid in New York City. Federal agents working with ICE on operations reportedly being told to be “camera ready” and wear tactical gear identifying their agency for the media. Trump talking about a migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay.
This blitz is more than just an indication of a real crackdown. It is the point in and of itself. The horrific spectacle of Trump’s mass deportation chimera produces one of the key goals: widespread terror.
Maybe the endgame is the elusive right-wing dream of “self-deportation.” Maybe it just gives the impression of “promise made, promise kept.” Either way, the administration will cheer the deportation machine the United States has long relied on as if Trump was the first to make use of it.
But the objective was accomplished. It caused fear. Reports of ICE activity in Chicago—and elsewhere—promptly created anxiety among immigrant communities.
Consider how on January 24, the White House account on X shared a photo of immigrants being loaded onto a cargo plane. “Deportation flights have begun,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared. “President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences.”
“This desire to popularize fear is unconscionable and abhorrent.”
Immigration experts and observers were quick to point out that deportation flights never stopped during the Biden administration. The novelty, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted, was the “PR” element of using a military aircraft. “This is utter propaganda,” he wrote, “and you have to make sure not to fall for it.” Tom Cartwright, an immigration activist who monitors ICE deportation flights, called it a “theater of the absurd.”
The shock and awe, as Lauren Carasik, a clinical professor of law and director of the Global Justice Clinic at Western New England University, writes in the Boston Review is meant to “ratchet up anxiety and overwhelm and disempower not only immigrants but the rights groups and even the faith-based and health care institutions that seek to protect them.”
In short: Fear is the goal.
The effect looks like immigrant families keeping children at home instead of sending them to school. From Colorado to Virginia, superintendents and principals have had to release statements and social media messages to reassure immigrant families.
“We’re already hearing stories of parents keeping their children home from school and families avoiding church services,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration reform America’s Voice, said in an email statement, “and we’re hearing the worries of leaders from essential industries, concerned about what the loss of workers in agriculture, construction, and health care will do to their workforce and our broader economy.”
To get the message across, the administration even had help from a TV personality. On Sunday, Phil McGraw, known as talk show host Dr. Phil, embedded with Trump’s faithful border czar Tom Homan, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other federal agents during operations in Chicago. “It’s a pretty high risk mission that we’re going on,” McGraw says in a video for his MeritTV network. “This truly is a targeted ICE mission because they’re not sweeping neighborhoods like people are trying to imply.” (That day, ICE arrested 1,179 people nationwide, according to NBC News, almost half of whom were deemed “criminal arrests.”)
In another excerpt, McGraw can be seen grilling a man over whether he had been charged with sex crimes or been deported before. Afterward, he went on television to parrot Homan’s talking points, including that ICE’s raids are focused on public safety threats and sanctuary cities are to blame for broader enforcement operations. “Tom Homan’s intention is, if you’re in the country illegally,” he said, “you need to self-deport because if they catch you in the country illegally, you could be barred from coming back into the country before a number of years.”
Back in December, McGraw reportedly brokered a friendly meeting between Homan and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, after which, according to Gothamist, the Democrat said he would alter sanctuary city laws to give local authorities more latitude to cooperate with the federal government on immigration enforcement.
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin called McGraw an “accomplice” and said having the TV host tag along with ICE “is dangerous and makes no sense.”
But the objective was accomplished. It caused fear. Reports of ICE activity in Chicago—and elsewhere—promptly created anxiety among immigrant communities. Advocates told Politico residents had been calling since the early morning to share what they thought were sightings of immigration officials in their neighborhoods.
“This desire to popularize fear is unconscionable and abhorrent,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said during a press briefing on Tuesday. Referencing McGraw’s stunt, he added: “We’re not entertained.”
This happened days after the Trump administration rescinded guidance that previously limited ICE activity in or near so-called “sensitive” locations, such as hospitals, places of worship, and schools. Officials at a Chicago elementary school even mistakenly reported the presence of ICE officers, before it was clarified that they were actually US Secret Service agents investigating a threat against an unnamed government official.
Trump and his aides will, no doubt, continue to try to ramp up and advertise arrests and deportations to quickly match the vision they sold of the largest deportation operation in US history. But they’re fully aware of the constraints to accomplish even one million deportations a year, including funding, detention space, personnel, and the finite universe of immigrants with serious criminal records to target.
Knowing they can’t easily deliver on mass deportation, Trump will want to make the public believe—especially those who could be potentially impacted—as if they can remove anyone and everyone. That terror will have real consequences.
