Washington, DC –  A States Newsroom article, “ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’,” recaps speeches from the “2025 Border Security Expo” held in Phoenix and featuring several Trump administration immigration leaders, including Trump’s Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons:

“The leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that his dream for the agency is squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American cities delivering packages. ‘We need to get better at treating this like a business,’ Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.’”

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“Human beings aren’t products to be wrapped, packaged, and shipped to fulfill an order. Yet the acting leader of ICE believes that is the ‘dream’ way for ICE to fulfill Trump’s order of mass deportation. Todd Lyons is the one who needs to be sent packing – and his comments encapsulate so much about this administration and their cruel and costly mass deportation agenda and worldview. Human beings, regardless of immigration status, aren’t Amazon packages.  We’ve experienced the violence that accompanies the dehumanization of immigrants, and we know the danger within this sentiment and line of thinking. As the administration turbocharges its mass deportation agenda, they are viewing any immigrant without status as a target to toss aside and ship out of the country. Immigrants are hardworking taxpayers, dedicated parents, and dependable co-workers; they are community members, Dreamers, TPS holders and caregivers; they have dreams and due process rights and basic dignities that this administration refuses to acknowledge. America is a nation of immigrants who have always enriched and strengthened this nation.”

In addition to the dehumanizing language, this administration continues to make clear that any immigrant without legal status is “criminal” to be deported (despite unauthorized status being a civil, not criminal, violation).  In addition to President Trump himself, the White House press secretary and Tom Homan, each of whom has regurgitated this view, the head of CBP’s El Centro California border sector, Gregory Bovino, reiterated the point in an interview with CalMatters. Upon questioning that highlighted that 77 of 78 immigrants recently arrested by Border Patrol in Kern County had no criminal record, Bovino said, “‘Every single one of the 78 that we arrested were criminals. Eight U.S.C. 1325 – illegal entry into the United States,’ he said, citing federal code for what is a misdemeanor offense … ‘If you’re an illegal alien, you’re getting it. A fentanyl dealer, you get it … It’s game on – anywhere.’”

Washington, DC — “Nearly 300 Students Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Deportation,” the New York Times reported:

“Nearly 300 international students were abruptly stripped of their ability to stay in the United States in recent days, according to universities and media reports, sowing fear among students and confusion at schools scrambling to help students facing detention and possible deportation … But lawyers said the Trump administration had often given no reason at all, leaving them to guess why students were targeted.”

The story puts into the big picture what numerous college campuses and local media have been reporting: beyond the headlines and in conjunction with the administration’s broader anti-immigration dragnet, the Trump administration is seeking to evict foreign students.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“This is what mass deportation looks like. Alongside high profile cases and major Trump administration announcements are the insidious everyday examples of what they are up to and who they are targeting. The administration’s efforts to detain and deport long-residing immigrants from communities across the country fits alongside their efforts to revoke visas from international students, including for undisclosed reasons, and to purge and keep out as many immigrants as possible. All of it comes at a cost for America, from depriving our economy of talented workers to spreading fear on college campuses to chilling future interest from foreign students from studying in America.”

A sampling of recent state and local examples of the administration targeting foreign students include:

• WGBH Boston reports, “UMass, Harvard student visas revoked in ‘new stage’ of Trump immigration crackdown,” stating that, “Seventeen current and former international students from Harvard, UMass Boston and UMass Amherst had their visas revoked amid the Trump administration’s ongoing push to deport international students, according to announcements from the universities’ leadership over the weekend.”
• Two Dartmouth students have had their F-1 statuses terminated: The Dartmouth reports, “Ph.D student Xiaotian Liu GR’s F-1 student status was abruptly revoked by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on April 4, according to a press release from the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. A second student’s record was also terminated, according to a statement from a College spokesperson.”
• University of Minnesota graduate student detained by ICE: NBC News reports, “A graduate student at the University of Minnesota was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Thursday at an off-campus residence, the school said in a statement.”
• University of Florida student detained by ICE and transported to Miami Detention Center: Miami New Times reports,” On March 28, Felipe Zapata Velásquez, a 27-year-old food and resource economics international student in his junior year, was arrested by the Gainesville Police Department for driving with an expired license and registration tag, according to police records. ICE took him to Jacksonville, where deportation proceedings began, his mother told the Colombian news channel NTN24.”
• ICE officers detain University of Alabama doctoral student: The Guardian states, “There was an outcry on campus at the University of Alabama on Thursday after US immigration authorities detained a doctoral student – an event which campus officials confirmed on Wednesday.”

Washington, DC — The following are statements from America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas and America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold reacting to the details and implications of this evening’s 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling lifting Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s use of the “Alien Enemies Act.”

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice: 

“This administration’s attacks on immigrants are the tip of the spear when it comes to attacks on all of our freedoms. While tonight’s Supreme Court ruling allows for basic due process, it does not hold President Trump to account for his indiscriminate attacks on immigrants or his invocation of an 18th century war time act that has previously led to internment camps and the trampling on the rights of U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike.

Instead of standing up for a full-throated defense of democracy and the rule of law, tonight’s ruling hands Trump a chisel to keep chipping away and eroding core tenets of our democracy.”

According to David Leopold, leading immigration attorney and America’s Voice legal advisor:

“While it’s good the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the people subject to the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ are entitled to habeas relief, it’s nevertheless disappointing that a majority of the Court did not hold the administration accountable for its outrageous behavior, including surreptitiously invoking the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ without notice and in a manner that was clearly designed to deny people their due process rights. As Justice Sotomayor observed in her dissent, ‘the Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.’ We would expect more from the Supreme Court of the United States as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer to the Constitution.”

Washington, DC — In a ruling yesterday blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from Venezuelans, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen noted this administration’s “generalization of criminality” to Venezuelans, calling it “baseless” and assessing it, “smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes.”

The judge’s assertion rings especially true in light of the details that continue to emerge about the Venezuelans summarily deported without due process to a notorious prison in El Salvador, including fresh reporting highlighting that a Maryland father and spouse of a U.S. citizen with protected status and no criminal record was among those deported. As Nick Miroff of The Atlantic writes, “An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison,” noting:

“The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the mega-prison where he’s now locked up.

…Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13 [the article goes on to describe why “Police did not identify him as a gang member”].

As Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) stated, “The Trump administration called it an ‘administrative error.’ But that error led to a nightmare for Maryland Resident Abrego Garcia” (listen to more from Senator Booker’s floor remarks on immigration yesterday here).

Also read Jonathan Blitzer in The New Yorker: “The Makeup Artist Donald Trump Deported Under the Alien Enemies Act,” detailing how “The President has invoked the law to send Venezuelans to prison in El Salvador without due process—and, in many cases, under false pretenses.”

As America’s Voice legal advisor and leading immigration attorney David Leopold wrote in his Washington Post op-ed this Sunday, “Trump’s immigrant purge is part of a larger agenda”:

“[D]ue process matters as a cornerstone of fairness and justice and is not a mere legal technicality. It mandates that no individual, including noncitizens in the United States, be deprived of life, liberty or property without a fair and just process. It is enshrined in the Constitution as a safeguard against arbitrary executive power … The Trump administration has used its first few months to target the due process rights of immigrants. If left unchecked, its efforts will threaten the broader rights and liberties of us all.”

• Read yesterday’s America’s Voice statement, “Compare & Contrast on Due Process: David Leopold Op-Ed vs. Stephen Miller Comments”

WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, America’s Voice hosted a press call outlining how mass deportations, coupled with proposed cuts to legal migration, will impact the American economy. This is the first in a series of calls focused on the consequences of Trump’s mass deportation plans.

Speakers shared data and economic analysis projecting how mass deportations, family separations, and cuts to visa and legal immigration avenues will impact every American. Of the potential consequences, they highlighted the likelihood of mass deportations spiking inflation, driving up deficits, cutting revenues, shrinking the workforce, and leading to a decline in GDP.

Here’s what economists and policy experts had to say on how President-elect Trump’s mass deportation and immigration plans will impact the U.S. economy:

Robert G. Lynch, Professor of Economics at Washington College, said: “Studies of past mass deportation episodes in the United States have shown that they caused the U.S. economy to contract. Jobs for American workers declined, American wages went down, and prices rose. The idea that mass deportation would help American citizens is an illusion. It has never worked in the past and it won’t work in the future.”

Resources from Robert G. Lynch:

• “Literature Review on the Economic Consequences of the Deportation of Unauthorized Immigrants,” by Robert G. Lynch (Washington College – Department of Economics) and Michael Ettlinger (University of New Hampshire) and
• “The Economic Impact on Citizens and Authorized Immigrants of Mass Deportation” by Robert G. Lynch (Washington College – Department of Economics) and Michael Ettlinger (University of New Hampshire)

Phillip Connor, Senior Demographer at FWD.us, said: “We must be clear: President-elect Trump’s mass deportation plans are, in reality, mass family separation plans. These policies would impact more than 28 million individuals in mixed-status and undocumented families, including over 20 million Latinos—approximately one in three Latinos in the U.S. Eliminating critical protections like Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), combined with the deportation of millions of others, would devastate local economies and lead to significant job losses in essential industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and agriculture. Our communities and economy thrive when immigrants with deep ties to the U.S. can live and work with security and stability. Now is the time to pursue real policy solutions that address our immigration challenges without compromising our economy or betraying our nation’s core values.”

Resources from FWD.us:

• Mixed-status families: https://www.fwd.us/news/mixed-status-families-oct/
• Inflation impacts: https://www.fwd.us/news/immigration-inflation/
• Undocumented workforce: https://www.fwd.us/news/pathway-to-citizenship/#americas-workforce
• Coalition for the American Dream DACA report: https://www.coalitionfortheamericandream.us/daca-economics/

Stuart Anderson, Executive Director of National Foundation for American Policy, said: “The best way to predict a second Trump term on immigration is to look at the policies in the first term. The Trump administration reduced legal immigration by cutting refugee admissions and enacting various bans and restrictions, some of which were blocked, primarily on procedural grounds. One should expect similar policies in the second Trump administration. A recent report our organization released found that without immigrants and their children, there would have been no labor force growth in the U.S. economy over the past 5 years. The economic impact of reduced immigration could be significant, particularly over the medium and long term.”

Resources from NFAP:

• New NFAP Policy Brief: Immigrants and America’s Labor Force Growth, October 15, 2024
• NFAP Policy Brief: Trump Immigration Policy, Legal Immigration, August 2024

Angela Kelley, Consultant and Senior Advisor to American Immigration Lawyers Association’s President, said: ”The tectonic plates of immigration law and policy are about to shift dramatically. The promise of mass deportations will inevitably cause tremendous harm in all corners of the country. There isn’t a firewall that will protect Americans from feeling the burn of a loss of workers’ labor and contributions to our economy.”