#immigration-enforcement

#immigration-enforcement

Donald Trump has sent waves of federal agents to Democratic-run "sanctuary cities" over the past eight months, depicting the operations like episodes in a roving MAGA reality show. The places targeted by the president tend to become temporary sites of protest-and produce fodder for his meme-driven administration's social-media channels. The relentless pressure on ICE to ramp up deportations has left officers on edge. The neighborhoods they're targeting are on edge too. Activists have marched in the streets and demonstrated outside federal buildings.

I'll be honest, it didn't take long for the fresh, excited energy I was trying to bring into 2026 to be quashed. (But maybe that's on me I forgot to put "attack a foreign country and seize its leader with only the murkiest of communications about what might come next" on my "out" list this year.) But this week, I want to talk about two other stories that, when juxtaposed,

The administration also closed two other offices with mandates to protect the public from misconduct-the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman and the Immigration Detention Ombudsman-saying the cuts were necessary to limit redundancy. Nonprofit groups sued, arguing that a department with more than 250,000 employees that interacts with 3 million to 4 million members of the public each day needed more oversight, not less.

On 25 May 2020, America witnessed a stunning act of police brutality when a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, murdered George Floyd. The killer, Derek Chauvin, apparently confident that he would be immune to accountability, did his deed in the open, with other officers standing by and in front of a crowd of onlookers. The video of Floyd's murder shocked the nation.

Officers confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting, the city said in a statement. Emergency responders then received a call for assistance from one of the shooting victims, a man, around 2:24pm (22:24 GMT) near Northeast 146th Avenue and East Burnside. Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds, the statement said. Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel.

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss what the so-called "Donroe Doctrine" means for international order after the US military extracted Maduro from Venezuela amid rumblings over Greenland and Cuba, the background and evolving situation in Minnesota after an ICE agent killed a woman during a raid, and how changes to the federal recommended childhood vaccine schedule dangerously denormalize routine vaccines with guest Dr. Josh Sharfstein, Professor of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots, McLaughlin wrote in a post on X. Mayor Jacob Frey alleged the officer recklessly shot her, adding immigration agents are causing chaos in our city. They're ripping families apart. They're sowing chaos on our streets and in this case quite literally killing people, Frey said at a news conference.

As far as I'm concerned, the policies of the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security have not changed. All those illegally present in the country are subject to deportation. I would just like to add how we got here. The president was very clear on the campaign to the American public, and it's one of the many reasons they resoundingly re-elected him back to this office, that he was not only going to crush foreign drug cartels,

The Trump administration has sent more immigration agents to Minnesota, part of escalating attacks and rhetoric against the state and its immigrant populations. The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed on X that it is surging to Minneapolis to root out fraud, arrest perpetrators and remove criminal illegal aliens. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Newsmax that the agency has in the city the largest immigration operation ever taking place right now.

The anti-immigrant crusade launched by the Trump administration in the first year of his second term has not only caused personal and social hardship: the U.S. economy has also suffered. Labor shortages, the closure of successful businesses, the loss of tax revenue from immigrants, and a drop in consumer spending are some of the consequences economists are warning about, which were already being felt in 2025 and are expected to worsen in 2026.