On Sunday, just two days after President Donald Trump pulled another TACO twist on immigration raids by suspending enforcement at farms, hotels, and restaurants, he rage-posted on his Truth Social site, demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers ramp up deportations in America’s sanctuary cities.
“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” he wrote. “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”
“The heartland” just told Trump to stop his draconian immigration enforcement, lest he destroy rural economies, and Trump listened. And who knew about this unholy alliance between immigrant workers and transgender people? Dastardly!
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Trump, clearly still butthurt over the embarrassing turnout at his poorly executed, creepy $45 million military-themed birthday parade, is doing what authoritarians always do: lashing out at his enemies. And no one triggers him more than the people living in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York—three cities that hosted massive “No Kings” protest rallies, eclipsing Trump’s grotesque celebration. So he wants ICE to punish them.
But Trump and ICE have a problem: Sanctuary cities don’t cooperate. Local law enforcement won’t help federal agents. And these cities are in blue states with Democratic governors who despise Trump. As I’ve written before, federal agencies operating solo simply don’t have the capacity to pull off large-scale raids.
The U.S. Border Patrol only has 20,000 agents, 17,000 of whom patrol the border (that isn’t about to stop, is it?). And as the CNN article cites, Homan said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only 6,000 officers—not nearly enough to deport millions of people.
As Trump’s former Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan said in an interview with Stateline, “It’s not going to be successful, as long as we have sanctuary cities and states that refuse to allow local and state police departments to work with ICE.”
So here’s the pickle: If Trump targets areas where he can rack up arrest stats—like Republican farm country—he guts the GOP’s agricultural base. But if he sticks to terrorizing sanctuary cities, he faces a hostile, organized citizenry that increasingly knows how to block ICE. Community watch groups and mobile alerts now routinely warn immigrants when raids are coming, slowing federal agents struggling to meet quotas to a crawl.
Yes, Trump and his masked ICE goons (the bad guys always hide their faces) can spread fear. But practically speaking? The federal government simply doesn’t have the boots on the ground to make a meaningful dent in the undocumented population of sanctuary cities.
The right can rant and rage about it all they want—but sanctuary cities are built to resist.