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The mass deportation of primarily brown and other non-white documented or undocumented immigrants was a major campaign focus for Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, have been relentless in rounding up, detaining without due process, and deporting anyone they believe is an “illegal alien,” including Native Americans, military veterans, and American citizens. ICE in particular has been breaking into people’s homes without a judicial warrant, pulling people from their cars, jobs, airport waiting lines, and immigration hearings, leaving the immigrants’ children, families, pets, homes, jobs, businesses, and communities devastated.
Not all of the people ICE has targeted were working in low-wage jobs in agriculture, construction, food service, or warehousing. Some of the people DHS and ICE have detained (and in some cases, deported) are scientists, college professors, teachers, nurses, doctors, college students, and even high school students, some only days or weeks away from graduation.
ICE has also had to release several people it illegally detained when they found out after the fact that those people were either in the U.S. legally, or were even American citizens.
In February 2026, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, was found dead in Buffalo, New York, after U.S. Border Patrol agents released him on a cold night. A medical examiner ruled his death a homicide caused by dehydration and exposure, sparking outrage. Agents had left the nearly-blind man outside a closed coffee shop after determining he was not deportable.
ICE is also directly responsible for the shooting deaths of three American citizens in the past few months: Kevin Porter, Jr. in Los Angeles, and Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
Several people held by ICE in the detention centers (located often hundreds of miles from their homes) have died while in custody, primarily due to the withholding of necessary medical attention. Several other people have been deported (again, without due process) to countries where they’ve never lived (or lived in decades before they were detained), and to deplorable prisons in those countries, which are paid by the U.S. government to accept those people.
Trump and his administration promised that they would arrest and deport only the “worst of the worst.” Yes, entering this country illegally is a CIVIL offense that could be punishable by deportation (AFTER due process and a trial and conviction), but almost 74% of those snatched up by ICE have no CRIMINAL records, and have been living productive lives, working hard, raising families, paying state and federal taxes, and contributing to their local economies. Many already have their green cards, allowing them to legally work in the United States.
These fervent anti-immigrant/white supremacy policies are not new in the United States, even though most white people in this country, including Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, and Marco Rubio, are only 1 - 3 generations away from their immigrant parents or grandparents themselves.
These proponents of the “Great Replacement Theory,” which posits that non-white people are “replacing” white American citizens, fail to recognize that not all immigrants are brown, low-class, and barely educated people who can’t properly speak English.
Based on 2024–2025 data, approximately 46% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. These companies, often called “New American” firms, generate trillions in revenue and employ over 15 million people.
Additionally, hundreds of thousands of immigrants (documented or not) are running small businesses of all kinds, from bodegas, cleaners, and taco trucks to IT companies, food service, construction firms, and various service organizations.
The undocumented immigrants whom Trump, Miller, et al., claim are “taking American jobs” contribute significantly to public funds, paying an estimated $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. This total includes personal income and FICO taxes, property taxes, and sales and excise taxes, from most of which they cannot benefit.
Still, keeping America as a majority white population is the ultimate goal, and the people implementing these current policies are reacting to the “browning” of America and realize that they soon will be in the minority.
The U.S. Constitution went into effect in 1789. Just one year later, the United States Congress implemented its first law to limit non-white immigrants, the Naturalization Act of 1790. This was the first law to define eligibility for citizenship by naturalization and establish standards and procedures by which immigrants became US citizens. In this law, Congress limited this important right to “free white persons,” meaning only white men. Women and all non-white people were excluded. Naturalization candidates only had to live in the United States for two years, and any white children born to them after this law was passed were immediately and automatically granted United States citizenship.
In 1846, Dred Scott, an enslaved African taken by his owner to the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, sued to gain his freedom. In 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that since Dred Scott was an enslaved person and the descendant of enslaved people, he was not a citizen and had no standing to sue. The SCOTUS further declared that African Americans had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” and also concluded that banning slavery in territories violated the Fifth Amendment rights of slaveholders, effectively legalizing slavery throughout the U.S. territories. The “Dred Scott Case,” as it came to be called, was one of the defining events that led to the Civil War.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to ALL persons born or naturalized in the U.S. (including former slaves), guaranteed “equal protection of the laws,” and provided “due process of law” against state violations. It also nullified the “3/5ths” law that counted slaves as only 3/5 of a person for census purposes. The “Citizenship Clause” of the 14th Amendment, also known as “birthright citizenship, is what Donald Trump is trying to revoke because most current immigrants are non-white, yet their children are immediately granted United States citizenship, hastening the time that the white majority of American citizens will soon be in the minority.
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery, and the 14th Amendment granted former slaves and EVERYONE born in the United States U.S. citizenship.
Ratified in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. Although the provisions of this amendment were vigorously opposed by many Southern states, it remained in effect until the passage of the Voting Rights Act VRA) in 1965. Republicans have worked to limit or eliminate most or all of the VRA since it became law, and even more so in the last few decades.
Signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first significant federal law restricting voluntary immigration to the U.S., banning Chinese laborers for 10 years and prohibiting them from becoming citizens. Chinese residents already in the U.S. were barred from naturalization and from becoming U.S. citizens. The Chinese Exclusion Act was later extended and made permanent, then repealed in 1943.
However, in the late 1890s, a U.S. citizen born of Chinese parents in San Francisco was blocked from re-entering the U.S. after traveling to China. He sued, and his case reached the Supreme Court. In the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that a child born in the U.S. to foreign citizens automatically becomes a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. The decision established that birthright citizenship applies regardless of the parents’ nationality, provided they are not foreign diplomats or invaders.
This case was referenced in the recent SCOTUS hearings about birthright citizenship, much to the disdain of Donald Trump and his Solicitor General.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the 1930s Mexican Repatriation was a mass deportation of approximately 300,000 to 2 million people of Mexican descent from the U.S. to Mexico, with nearly 60% of those deported being U.S. citizens. The Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were “accused” of taking jobs from ”real (that is, white) Americans.”
In early 1942, after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the relocation of over 100,000 people of Japanese descent, the majority of whom were American citizens, into hastily built internment camps throughout the western and midwestern United States.
The order stayed in place until President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9742 on June 25, 1946. EO 9742 ordered the liquidation of the War Relocation Authority and allowed Japanese-Americans to return to their homes, businesses, and properties, most of which had been destroyed.
In October 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched a mobile device app called CBP One to provide travelers, with or without entry documents, with access to certain CBP functions prior to their arrival in the United States. Starting in May 2023, CBP One became the primary method by which asylum seekers could enter the United States at ports of entry through the end of the Biden administration.
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a temporary, renewable immigration status granted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to foreign nationals already in the U.S. whose home countries are deemed unsafe due to ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters, or other extraordinary, temporary conditions. Recipients, primarily from Venezuela, Haiti, and Sudan, have been granted TPS and have had temporary relief from deportation and authorization to work legally in the U.S.
The Trump administration has repeatedly refused to extend TPS and given TPS recipients 30 days to leave the United States.
However, Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, who was appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama, recently ruled that the Trump Administration unlawfully stripped legal status from nearly 900,000 immigrants, and ordered that TPS status be restored.
At least two people who had at one time been granted parole, Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal and Emmanuel Damas, later died in ICE custody.
They followed the process.
They entered the system the way they were told to.
And still, they ended up detained.
And they still died.
Our Choice:
Continue to fight against the Trump administration’s attempt to replace DEI with “WEI” (White, Entitled, and Incompetent).
Continue to fight against the mass deportation goals of primarily non-white people that are cruel and inhumane.
Continue to help ensure that the 2026 midterm elections are free and fair, and be ready to fight Trump and the Republicans, who will not only cheat to win those elections but will also refuse to accept any results that do not favor them.
Continue to fight for the rights of ALL American citizens, including the beneficiaries of the 14th Amendment birthright citizenship clause, documented and undocumented immigrants, and LGBT persons.
Paid subscribers are encouraged to comment on today’s Choice post.
Our goal is to make “We Are Speaking” a best-selling publication by July 1, 2026, increasing our reach and influence! To achieve our goal, we will need 15 new paid subscribers every week, or 5 paid subscribers per day for the three days a week we publish. If you value our publication, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5/month or $50/year. We appreciate your financial support!
