Donald Trump’s mass deportation promise has hit some logistical and ethical hiccups in his first week back in office, forcing his administration to abandon the numbers and instead focus on PR.
Even Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has admitted that the feat of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants just isn’t possible.
While the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is bragging on X about arrests and publishing its numbers across social media, an insider told the Washington Post that the Trump administration is far from happy.
According to the anonymous source, the White House has issued new daily quotas on ICE agents, telling the federal officers to ramp up their hundreds of daily arrests to at least 1,200 or 1,500.
The Trump administration has even employed the help of a right-wing celebrity talking head to boost public morale: Dr. Phil McGraw.
Activists with Revcom Corps Chicago hold signs outside of Hamline Elementary School in Chicago after federal agents were refused entry on Jan. 24, 2025.
The talkshow host—who is, by the way, a fake doctor—tagged along with Homan on a raid in Chicago where he spoke with a handcuffed undocumented immigrant from Thailand.
“The first arrest in Chicago with @RealTomHoman was a convicted sex offender and internet predator from Thailand,” McGraw wrote on X along with a video of the arrest.
And while Homan told McGraw that they aren’t just “picking up anyone with a tan,” at least 15 Native Americans across Arizona and New Mexico have reported being stopped, questioned, or detained by federal law enforcement.
According to CNN, one Indigenous woman was in her workplace when it got raided. She and seven other Native Americans were lined up behind white vans where they were questioned for two hours without access to their phones or any way to contact their families.
“There’s a lot of fear, and I know they’re probably feeling frustrated knowing that they don’t feel safe in the country where they were born or where their ancestors come from and there’s a lot of frustration of them being stereotyped,” Navajo Nation Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley told CNN. “I think there’s a confusion with other races, maybe just because having a brown skin, automatically being profiled or stereotyped to be in a certain group or race.”
Undocumented immigrants who were detained by ICE officials also made headlines for the demoralizing treatment from the U.S. government.
The inhumane shipment of Colombian and Brazilian immigrants back to their home countries caused a massive reaction from Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Brazilian officials.
Photos showed undocumented immigrants handcuffed and lined up as they were hurried on to military aircrafts where they were reportedly denied food and water.
One Brazilian minister said the practice of handcuffing undocumented immigrants was “blatant disrespect” to their people.
“On the plane they didn’t give us water, we were tied hands and feet, they wouldn’t even let us go to the bathroom,” Edgar Da Silva Moura, a Brazilian immigrant, told France 24. “It was very hot, some people fainted.”
“Things have already changed [with Trump], said Luis Antonio Rodrigues Santos, a 21-year-old who was deported. “Immigrants are treated as criminals.”
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