The Trump administration says its mass deportations are well underway. More than 8,000 immigrants were arrested in the first two weeks of the new term; 461 were released. It’s not adding up to the “millions and millions” of deportations Trump promised on his inauguration day, and NBC news is reporting the president is angry the numbers aren’t higher.
But we are seeing signs of ramped-up deportations here in Arizona, where an armored tank and dozens of federal agents arrived on a quiet Phoenix street to arrest a 61-year-old undocumented immigrant recently.
It’s the kind of political show Laurie Roberts says is far from normal. Roberts is a columnist for the Arizona Republic, and she joined The Show along with editorial page editor Elvia Díaz to talk more about it.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Laurie, begin for us by describing this operation in northwest Phoenix recently. They were after Alfonso Garcia Vega, who ICE has been deported repeatedly, convicted of various offenses, illegal reentry, weapons offenses. It makes sense that he would be a target for deportation, yeah?
LAURIE ROBERTS: Yeah, it does make sense. They’ve said that they were going to start with the — well, actually they said they were going to start with violent criminals. I don’t know that he’s been convicted of any violent offenses, but he has been convicted multiple times and deported multiple times. So he would seem to be a target.
So it’s a Sunday morning on his west Phoenix street, and he’s walking down the street, and two ICE officers attempt to get him to come over and talk with them. He does I think what a lot of immigrants have been told they’re supposed to do, which is ignore the Ice agents and make a beeline for your front door.
And so that’s what he did. And he wouldn’t open the door when they knocked on it. So they come back that afternoon, not just an ICE agent or two, but with an armored vehicle complete with a battering ram on the front and several dozen officers — agents, I guess you would call them — in their cars with lights flashing.
The battering ram comes down. Through the loudspeaker, he’s told, “Please come out with your hands up.” They won’t answer the door. They don’t respond. Eventually, there are flashbang grenades — you know, those stun grenades that are thrown. And eventually he does surrender and come out.
So they got their man. But they also sent a very strong message in that neighborhood, which is that you better know that we’re serious about this.
GILGER: The Republic’s Daniel Gonzalez talked to his son. What did he have to say about this man who was arrested in this way?
ROBERTS: Well, he said his father came to the U.S. about 40 years ago the first time, proceeded to build a life and have a family, has four U.S.-born children between his deportation. He said that he was deported the last time, I believe in 2020. Came back in 2023 because he was being threatened by the Sinaloa drug cartel. He kind of fudged on whether he thought his father had a criminal record, but he said he’s got health issues and just wants to live out his life here.
I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of sympathy for that. The real interest, to me at least, in this particular deportation was the level of response that ICE gave it, complete with the tank. And I don’t think that I mentioned they also had somebody there from ICE filming this whole thing, which sort of ties into their whole national thing of Kristi Noem.
Here’s Kristi Noem on her horse with her cowboy hat at the border. And here she is in her bulletproof vest in New York during a thing. And every day ICE is putting out just this campaign of “We’re out there, and we’re going to get you.” So I think it’s tied in quite well to that.
GILGER: Elvia, let me ask you about that and sort of the larger picture here. We’ve seen some workplace raids so far. We have seen, it seems, some ramping up in deportations. But we’ve also seen, as Laurie is getting out there, sort of a lot of media around it. Is that the difference?
ELVIA DÍAZ: That’s the difference, and it is made for that. Ordinary people and taxpayers should be incredibly concerned about all the money that is being spent on a show. This kind of deportation so far has been made for TV with multi agencies, with tons of immigration and other enforcement officials just to detain one man who, even if he has a criminal record, clearly they could have taken him easily without that show.
And as we know, producing a TV show is really expensive. So yes, they are absolutely sending the message that they are in the business of deporting. And I believe President Trump just wants to show to his people that he is doing it, that he is, in fact, ready to deport the millions of people that you mentioned there at the intro regardless.
And it’s also a way to make sure that people are panicking. And clearly immigrants are very afraid, but also everyone else around it. They want people to snatch on immigrants. They want people to call the hotline.
GILGER: Laurie, will it, though, maybe deter people, encourage folks to self-deport. That must be part of the calculation.
ROBERTS: Well, I think that’s a big part of the calculation. For one thing, I don’t think that they have a place to house all these millions upon millions of immigrants that they want to deport. They’re really hoping to send the message: A) If you’re thinking about coming here, don’t. And B) Iif you’re already here, you might as well just go ahead and go home, because otherwise I’m going to put you in Guantanamo Bay in some deep hole, and nobody’s ever going to hear from you again.
I think those are the two messages that we hear most often, with the idea being that hopefully these people will pack up and go home, and then it won’t cost us anything and the show will be over. I mean, he’s playing to two crowds here. One is his voters — and he undoubtedly was elected to do just what he’s doing — and immigrants who are here, telling them, ‘We will get you. We will find you. And you will find a tank on your front lawn if you don’t just go ahead and save yourself the misery of all of this and self-deport.”
DÍAZ: There is absolutely no evidence that immigrants are afraid enough to self-deport. I mean, at least I don’t see it. I don’t see it in Arizona, and I don’t see it anywhere because returning to their native lands will be a lot worse than being here.
GILGER: Elvia, what does it do, or what is it doing already to immigrant communities? I mean, we saw Latinos vote for Trump in larger numbers than they had in the past, this past election. And now you’re seeing, I’m sure, some fear among immigrant communities.
DÍAZ: Well, there’s no mistake that Latinos and especially Latino men voted for Donald Trump. And I have talked to some of them, and I have heard and I have seen what they say on social media, and they still believe that Trump is doing exactly what he promised he would do. And they believe that immigration went out of control.
But at the same time, I hear a lot of fear, including from some of those Latinos and Latinas who voted for Trump and have relatives, are undocumented. Now they’re very afraid for them because they naively thought that Trump was only going to target the criminals or the bad people, as they say. And so a lot of fear.
We’ll see what happens. I don’t see that minimizing any time soon.
GILGER: Laurie, let me ask you lastly about the reaction to this. You wrote about some of the reaction on social media to this particular story. Lots of people saying, “This is great, good job, well done.” Do you think that there will be backlash at some point, like we saw under the first Trump administration when they started dividing families, things like that?
ROBERTS: Oh, absolutely. At some point they’re going to trip themselves up. They’re going to arrest the wrong person, or they’re going to deport a U.S. citizen. It’s inevitable with a deportation program this widespread that something’s going to go wrong in a high-profile fashion, and then people will start to say, “What are we going to do here?”
But I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. Based on the reactions that I see from people, they not only cheered the bringing of a tank into this quiet neighborhood and the military style operation, but they said, “Hey, all of his kids should go with them because they’re here illegally, too.” Which of course they’re not, they have birthright citizenship in this country.
But the mood is not one that is with any kind of sympathy for anyone who is here illegally at the moment. And I think it’s going to just have to ride out the pendulum swing, and this one will inevitably, too.
