Trump may be pushing to break immigration laws to invigorate political support with his MAGA base, but ICE still deports people in an orderly manner.

For criminal warrants, which require a federal judge to sign off on, they may take into custody all people present to collect evidence and, conveniently for them, to run identity checks so they can deport undocumented individuals. US citizens may be temporarily detained until ICE can determine their legal status, but the Massachusetts immigration lawyer in the podcast, Matt Cameron, is not aware of lawless sweeps of neighborhoods or workplaces occurring today in which ICE does not perform identity checks during criminal warrant enforcement.

From a triage standpoint, more concerning are administrative warrants that require no federal judge generally comes in the form of ICE camping courthouses to interrupt local judicial proceedings to capture individuals be they defendants, witnesses, or victims. However, even this potentially unbounded method for accelerating deportations is limited by the number of ICE officers directly involved in enforcement removal operations. Cameron estimates only about 7,000 currently are active. See OA 1100: Mass Deportation is Much Harder Than Trump Thinks (2024-12-16).

I am not saying that Trump wants to follow the law. What I am saying is that the judicial system, and people’s belief in its efficacy, present roadblocks to even Presidential power. Judges must be replaced with loyal syncophants, corrupt ICE officers must be hired and retained, buy-in from local law enforcement (often annoyed that their criminal cases are being disrupted by ICE) must be obtained, and people’s expectations that paperwork accompany law enforcement must be eliminated. And at every step of the way, educated people like immigration lawyers are aware of the exact details of the evil being pushed by Trump. So, find one you can trust who is not fear-mongering; listen to or read their publications so you can spend your mental energy tracking developments that matter rather than less likely scenarios, such as US citizens being removed through accident or malice by ICE.

I hope other areas of government do not differ in that similar roadblocks exist to slow down Trump’s lawless orders. What I am saying is that within each domain of government under attack, we need to prioritize which norms deserve focused protests and which can be considered safe for now.

tl;dr: Immigration law isn’t safe, but we should prioritize our worries on the most plausible immediate problems within it.