Yareliz Mendez-Zamora, of the pro-migrant organization American Friends Service Committee from Florida, keeps a memory with which he could put a face to this year which is coming to an end. It is that of a family who had the choice of their fate in the premises of the Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) in Miramar, Miami. The couple had arrived early for her meeting with the authorities. The woman came in, he stayed outside, but an unexpected message let him know that he had to come in too. At that point, the police told them that one of them was going to be deported, but the couple had to choose who it would be. She said she was leaving because he was the one working and maintaining the house. He said no, that she had to stay with the two children. Ultimately it was the mother who stayed in the United States.
“I was shocked,” said Mendez-Zamora, who accompanied the family. “This has been one of the most difficult, cruelest years, where we have seen the most human rights violations,” the activist said in front of the Miramar facility, where a group of volunteers, organizations, religious leaders and relatives of people detained by ICE gathered to protest on the eve of International Migrants Day, commemorated this December 18.
This year, 2025, ends as possibly the most terrifying year for the migrant population in the United States, with more than 65,000 people in detention, 605,000 deportations and 1.9 million self-deportations, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. “The Trump administration is breaking historic records,” department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin celebrated last week. “Illegal immigrants hear our message that they must leave now. They know that if they don’t, we will find them, arrest them and they will never come back,” he added.
Like a horror film, images of the migration offensive undertaken by the White House have followed one another in recent months: families forcibly separated by masked agents; children are afraid to go to school and parents hide; expulsions to third countries, some as far away as South Sudan or Eswatini; massive raids in different cities across the country; arrests in court; hundreds of thousands of people who lost their legal status…
“It’s been an exhausting and frustrating year. What’s happened is terrifying,” says María Asunción Bilbao, campaign coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. of Florida, who visits ICE offices in Miramar every week to accompany migrant families who appear for their appointments with authorities. “Tomorrow, Migrants’ Day, will be a sad day in this country, because they do not respect the rights of any refugee, but I save the courage of migrants; you have to be courageous to leave everything and come to a new country.”
What is happening today in the United States is a truth that does not surprise those who listened attentively to Trump throughout his campaign, based on the speech of guaranteeing “national security” with the expulsion of all “criminals”. Trump has done everything possible to keep what he promised before the elections that brought him back to power in November 2024: to carry out “the largest expulsion in history”.
ICE arrests increase
In order to professionalize the expulsion of migrants, Trump implemented not only his speech, but also a vast economic arsenal guaranteeing the detention, confinement and expulsion of people. For this he had a body that he would strengthen until it became the greatest source of fear: ICE.
Stephen Miller, the ideologue of the anti-immigration policy of this administration, detected that during the first months arrests were not accelerating, so it was necessary to increase the number of arrests to 3,000 to reach the promised quota. If in April federal authorities arrested about 18,000 people per month, in November arrests were about 21,127, a figure even lower than the government’s claims.
To strengthen, among other things, the ICE mechanism, Trump signed into law his tax reform, the so-called “big, beautiful law,” in July. Today, the agency has become the best funded in U.S. history, with a budget of more than $100 billion, up from about $8 billion before. Some 45 billion would be allocated to the construction of new detention centers and some 14 billion to deportation operations. Some 30 billion, for their part, would be used to recruit more agents and bring in up to 100,000 personnel to pursue migrants.
The result is visible: large-scale immigration operations in large, predominantly Democratic cities that once served as sanctuaries. The agents arrived in Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Charlotte (North Carolina), again despite the refusal of local authorities. They are also in courthouses across the country, where they wait for migrants to finish their hearings so they can handcuff them.
Increase in deportation flights
Other tools were also used to grease the government’s anti-immigration machine during these months: the end of temporary protected status (TPS) for several nationalities and hundreds of thousands of people; removing the program speechwhich left more than half a million beneficiaries in uncertainty; he travel ban signed in June to end legal migration from several countries and expanded to 39 countries this week; thousands of 287(g) agreements, which allow local police to work hand-in-hand with ICE; or the signing of pacts with third countries which welcome expelled migrants. According to Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor, deportation flights under the second Trump administration have exceeded 1,900, a 41% increase over the same period in 2024.
The president has also not hesitated to test the limits of the law to achieve his ends and has defied the courts that try to block his actions. Using the Foreign Enemies Act of 1889, the Republican administration sent more than 200 Venezuelans accused of gang membership to a megaprison in El Salvador, despite a judge’s ban. Other migrants have been sent to extraterritorial detention centers, such as the Guantanamo naval base. The number of people released on bail, parole or supervision, which had fallen to 3% in September, has also been reduced.
On top of all this, the president suspended not only asylum or residence procedures, but also paralyzed procedures such as citizenship, thus attacking the highest status a migrant obtains in the country. Recently, Trump was asked if he would consider denaturalizing immigrants who have been granted citizenship. “If I have the power to do it, I will. Absolutely,” he replied. This Tuesday, we learned that his government would now seek to denaturalize between 100 and 200 people per month. If it succeeds, it would mean a massive increase in denaturalization processes: from 2017 to today, there have been only 120 cases.
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