Trump immigration approach is ripping America's social fabric

The tensions over aggressive immigration raids in Minnesota, particularly after the shooting of Renee Good, have brought the debate on deportations of immigrants who are in the country illegally to a near-boiling point. Videos of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling people out of their cars and questioning people about their citizenship and place of birth based on their appearance and accent have sparked outrage, as have incidents of citizens being detained.

President Donald Trump has shrugged this off by saying that ICE “is going to make mistakes sometimes.” Trump officials, as well as Trump supporters, argue that aggressive enforcement is needed to carry out the president’s mandate for mass deportations. And yet polls show that the public is increasingly turning against these tactics, which look more like a police state than America as we know it.

There is no question that concerns about illegal immigration were a major reason for Trump’s victory. But is there a saner way to handle the issue?

While mass deportations are popular with Trump’s hardcore base, polls show that the American public’s thinking on the issue is far more nuanced. In a Pew Research Center poll in March 2025, only 32% of Americans said that all immigrants who are in the United States illegally should be deported; 16% answered “none.” More than half were in favor of deporting some of those immigrants — especially those who have committed violent or even nonviolent crimes — but had little appetite for deportation if the immigrant had a job, was brought to this country as a child, had a U.S. citizen spouse, or was the parent of a child born in the United States.

The Trump administration has often highlighted the detention and deportation of what it calls illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes, claiming that it’s going after “the worst of the worst.” But a Cato Institute study showed that of the people taken into ICE custody in October and November 2025, only 5% had been convicted of a violent crime while 8% had a property crime conviction. Nearly three-quarters — 73% — had never been convicted of a crime; while 27% had pending charges, it’s unclear how many of those were immigration-related offenses.

Deportation hawks often claim that all undocumented immigrants have committed a crime by illegally crossing the border. In fact, between 40% and 50% are people who overstayed their visas — a civil violation but not a crime. Many others are asylum-seekers who had their application denied but were allowed to stay in this country on parole and have been regularly checking in with immigration authorities. And more than 1.5 million have been effectively reclassified as illegal by the Trump administration’s decision to terminate their Temporary Protected Status.

Democratic leaders in liberal states including Minnesota have been criticized for severely limiting state and local authorities’ cooperation with federal agents, which has made it harder to apprehend immigrants committing crimes. This obstruction, administration officials have said, forces ICE to conduct immigration sweeps that result in more detentions of noncriminals and often intimidate citizens and legal residents, particularly those whose race or ethnicity places them at risk of profiling. But the truth is that such abusive raids have also been conducted in “red” states with no sanctuary policies, such as Florida.

A national strategy that prioritized the deportation of criminals would have broad support, and Democrats should commit themselves to such a strategy. The Trump administration’s current approach is ripping apart America’s social fabric under the guise of protecting homeland security.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.