For years, I have made the same point repeatedly: President Donald Trump’s push for immigrant deportations was never about legal status. It was never about whether immigrants were “illegal” or undocumented.

When an administration like Trump’s targets a community so violently, the policy isn’t and never was strictly about immigration enforcement or legal status. It’s about exercising political power and deliberately marginalizing that community. Back in April 2024, I argued that when Trump uses degrading language against a specific immigrant community, he’s directing the statements at all immigrants. That November, I wrote a piece about how the Latino community voted against each other in the 2024 presidential election by voting for Trump, a candidate with a very negative stance toward the immigrant community. Then last September, I argued that U.S. citizens lack empathy for immigrants, using the term “legality” as justification for inhumane treatment toward immigrants. Time and time again, Trump’s language and actions have shown his disdain goes deeper than a piece of documentation. We are now witnessing an administration that is inherently against all immigrants and enacting policies in accordance with that belief.

When Trump first started expressing his interest in running for a second term, my concern immediately went to how this would affect immigration policies. I could already imagine the heightened mass deportations, mistreatment of immigrants and racial profiling. But when I shared my concerns with my friends, classmates and family, they largely shut me down. 

They hit me with a variety of different arguments. My classmates told me Trump would need Congressional approval to enact many of his immigration-related policies. Professors told me the Supreme Court would strike down anything that was unfair or unconstitutional. Family members and acquaintances told me his immigration stance and corresponding policies in his first term “weren’t that bad,” so I didn’t really have a reason to be worried. Many said my concerns weren’t warranted because everyone the United States deported would be “just fine.” Yeah, right. I was also confronted with the decades-old argument that Trump is only against “illegal” immigrants. This logic hasn’t held up in his second term. At the time, people told me that because I and the majority of my family are citizens, we had nothing to worry about. 

Since Trump’s return to power last January, his administration has deported over 600,000 people, and a total of around three million immigrants have left the country, from both formal removal and self-deportations. The number of deportations in his first year back in office is higher than the combined number of deportations in all four years of former President Joe Biden’s administration. The Supreme Court ruled last summer that the United States can deport immigrants to countries where they are not from. Last September, the Supreme Court issued an order that allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to racially profile people and use their race or ethnicity as a means for stopping them. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-GA) investigation found over 1,000 “credible reports” of human rights violations in immigration detention centers — including the abuse of women and children, denial of adequate food and water and medical neglect. 

Over the last year, ICE and Border Patrol agents have used force against immigrants and pepper sprayed both protesters and police officers present at the site of protests. Just last month, two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were shot and killed by ICE Agents in Minneapolis. Closer to home, ICE detained a woman from Maryland for 25 days despite being a U.S. citizen. And ICE has detained over 170 U.S. citizens over the past year. 

It seems like all of my worst fears have come true during Trump’s first year back in office. Despite everyone’s reassurances that nothing terribly bad could happen under the system of checks and balances or because of the argument of legality versus illegality, neither has stopped or influenced the administration’s policies. Even when Trump entered his presidency, my peers at GW still felt Trump’s return wouldn’t seriously affect the immigrant community. Some really believed it actually came down to whether someone was a citizen or not. People would tell me that the Trump administration can’t deport American citizens — however, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the United States deported 70 “potential” citizens from 2015 to 2020. When Trump was going after pro-Palestinian international students and tried to revoke their visas, a Hatchet staff member told me they didn’t think students were worried because international student deportations weren’t “actually happening.”

I understand it is difficult to grasp how an administration could be so violent and hateful. But we are seeing it play out in real time — with ICE, in Minneapolis, with the countless other immigrant communities that are affected across America. The biggest misconception many seem to hold is that the Trump administration only goes after undocumented immigrants. In almost every argument I have had about immigration, I am told that he only goes after “criminals” or only goes after those who aren’t citizens. ICE and Border Patrol agents have shown their viciousness with the people they detain, including American citizens.

We need to stop buying into this narrative that Trump’s hate lies solely with illegal immigration. His administration never had the intention of only getting rid of criminals or those who are undocumented — what they want is to get rid of all immigrants in the United States. I understand that many people’s first concern is not immigration. Most people do not live near the Mexican border or have immigrant family members. But what the Trump administration is doing is going after our classmates, neighbors and coworkers, regardless of their citizenship status. 

Last semester, when I wrote about immigration, I asked that people recognize how inhumanely the Trump administration was treating people. Trump has completely disproven the argument of those who believed he was only going after undocumented immigrants, and even of those who believed he wouldn’t be able to find a way to push his callous agenda. 

The Department of Homeland Security in December posted a photo of a sunny beach, captioned “America After 100 Million Deportations.” The United States has a population of around 340 million, around 53 million immigrants. Over 100 million people in the U.S. identify as non-white. This means that the Trump administration would have to deport American citizens. We have to stop believing this was ever about citizenship.