A summer of confrontations is coming on immigration | Opinion
This summer we’re going to see an increasingly ferocious battle over the next steps in Donald Trump’s campaign to purge America of its millions of undocumented immigrants. The site of the next skirmishes will be in two court rooms Thursday. They won’t be the last.
Judge Hannah C. Dugan of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court is set to appear in court on charges that she aided an undocumented immigrant criminal in his effort to evade federal agents. Newark Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ras Baraka is also scheduled to be in a New Jersey court on charges that he trespassed at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in the city.
In the case of Judge Dugan, it is telling that the 150 judges who signed a letter attacking the Trump administration’s decision to arrest her didn’t actually defend her alleged actions in hiding the undocumented immigrant, but only argued that the Trump administration was wrong on the etiquette of arresting a judge.
With the New Jersey mayor, it is hard to tell from video whether the Trump administration is being petty in its prosecution of the case or whether Mayor Baraka got just the publicity he was looking for.
In the background of both court cases will be the Trump administration’s resoundingly successful effort to close the border, where illegal crossings have plummeted compared to the average numbers during the Biden administration.
Don’t listen to Trump’s crowing; listen to the skeptics at Factcheck.org: “In (Trump’s) first 100 days in office, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle. Apprehensions of migrants who illegally crossed the border in February and March fell to 8,346 and 7,181 — the lowest monthly totals since at least the 1960s. That’s an 83% drop from November (46,615) and December (47,324) of 2024, the last two full months under President Joe Biden. The most recent monthly totals are a fraction of the figure in December 2023, when apprehensions of illegal border-crossers peaked under Biden at 249,740.”
In the forefront of both cases is Trump’s more difficult task of tracking down and removing millions of undocumented immigrants, both those that came here in an unprecedented surge under Joe Biden’s management and millions more who have been here for longer. Depending on who you believe, the number of people involved could range from 10 to 20 million.
Even if Trump succeeds in quickly ramping up deportations to a million a year, as the administration has planned, the job won’t be done at the end of the president’s term. Only a fraction of the migrants will be removed.
To achieve even that number an unprecedented legion of law enforcement officers, federal, state and local, will need to focus on the issue while private contractors, the military and federal civilian workers expand the existing network of detention centers for those scheduled for deportation.
The latest lever that Trump has pulled is assigning Justice Department officers from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Drug Enforcement Agency to bolster the 20,000 new Department of Homeland Security agents he is trying to hire. They’ll fan out in a couple dozen mostly Democrat-run cities where local officials are used to giving federal immigration agents the stiff arm.
In the coming clash, there will likely be more Judge Dugans and Mayor Baraka as federal officials used to deference come into increasing contact with public officials who don’t want to give it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has made the threat pretty clear: “Some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law,” Bondi told Fox News. “And they are not.”
That means more federal agents chasing more undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities where progressive Democrats, politicians and activists alike, will be protesting their actions. It’s a sure recipe for a summer of confrontations.
This story was originally published May 15, 2025 at 10:10 AM with the headline "A summer of confrontations is coming on immigration | Opinion."
