President Donald Trump sought to use Los Angeles as a test case for his most dramatic efforts to date to fulfill his campaign promise to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history. The results show he may have overplayed his hand.
After immigration officials carried out a series of sweeps in Los Angeles, crowds began to gather, leading to protests and, in some cases, clashes with police. Trump sent in the National Guard over the objection of the governor, then the Marines. A California senator was removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press event when he tried to ask questions.
So what did Americans think of all this? Roughly half said Trump has “gone too far” with the arrests of immigrants and disapprove of his handling of the protests, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
True to form, Trump is now doubling down. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, he wrote that he will be directing ICE to “expand efforts to detain and deport” undocumented immigrants in “America’s largest cities,” specifically naming Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.
Even if Trump wanted to carry out mass deportations at the scale he’s promised, the logistics are nearly impossible.
Even if Trump wanted to carry out mass deportations at the scale he’s promised, the logistics are nearly impossible. At its peak, during the Obama administration, removals hit around 400,000 people per year. According to government officials, around 207,000 people have been deported so far in 2025. Under Trump’s first term, he never surpassed those Obama numbers. Deporting 10 million to 15 million people, as Trump has suggested, would require a sustained removal rate far beyond what any administration has ever achieved.
There are also hard limits on what ICE can do. The agency has just more than 6,000 deportation officers nationwide, with only a fraction focused on interior enforcement. Immigration courts, meanwhile, are struggling to cope with more than 3.5 million pending cases. Even basic removals often take years to process due to backlog, appeals and lack of legal representation.
Then there’s the reality that many of the people Trump wants to target — longtime undocumented residents — have deep community ties, U.S.-born children and valid legal claims. Ramping up arrests also means clashing with local officials and law enforcement, many of whom have made clear they will not cooperate with federal crackdowns.
“The root cause of Trump’s radical new ICE policy — and thus, the L.A. protests — is dumb,” Vox’s Eric Levitz posted last week on X. “Trump brought border crossings to a halt. This caused his deportation numbers to fall below Biden’s. So, ICE is terrorizing longtime U.S. residents until Trump can say he’s got the bigger number.”
Events like those in Los Angeles could serve as mobilizing events that harden a more organized opposition to Trump.
Deporting millions might sound on brand for Trump but it’s clear the math does not work, and even he has acknowledged the economic consequences.
According to The New York Times, his own agriculture secretary is advocating for a pause on enforcement actions in locations such as farms, hotels and restaurants. (The administration has already decided to continue the raids, however.) The anti-immigrant narrative, fueled by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s reported tirades, is a spectacle designed to generate fear and cast immigrants as enemies, with militarized crackdowns directly threatening all of our rights as Americans.
Immigration is no longer a policy issue. It’s being used to inflame resentment, criminalize dissent and mobilize a loyal political base. But in a country that grows more diverse every year, the images of federal agents arresting Latino workers or physically removing a Latino senator from a press event are not signs of a successful strategy. They are the desperate optics of a campaign that has no viable solution, only stunts.
The backlash appears to be growing. Civil rights organizations are responding more forcefully. Business coalitions and local officials are expressing concern. What might excite Trump’s core supporters is alienating a broader public that is tired of chaos and cruelty. We’ve seen this play before. When California passed Proposition 187 in the 1990s, it sparked a pro-immigration movement that is still felt today. Calling this a battle for the country’s future is not an exaggeration. It is, quite literally, a fight between an imagined American past and an emerging reality.
The demographic future of the country is not on his side.
Trump can continue to stage raids and issue executive orders, but the system cannot sustain the promises he’s making. The courts are beginning to push back and, for now, they appear to be holding. The demographic future of the country is not on his side.
What we are witnessing is not dominance or campaign promises being fulfilled. It might be a case of political panic and that is never a good thing.
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