The Trump administration is escalating its deportation crackdown against Latino communities just days after Republicans suffered a devastating midterm defeat, with masked federal agents surrounding a hospital emergency room, families separated at airports, college students detained on their way back to school, and spreading fear through immigrant communities across the country.
The aggressive enforcement push has been reported across multiple states, including California, Alabama, Arizona and Florida. And despite Donald Trump briefly suggesting that his immigration policies may have gone too far, his administration is making one thing clear: The deportation machine isn’t slowing down.
In Los Angeles, masked immigration officers wearing body armor blocked the driveway of a hospital emergency room in a heavily Latino neighborhood early Saturday morning.
The agents had assembled outside Adventist Health White Memorial Medical Center, where a detainee had been brought for medical treatment, according to Bill Essayli, the Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Los Angeles.
The unusual scene alarmed nearby residents.
Erick Gasca, 31, said he returned home Friday night after playing board games with friends and found an “unprecedented” number of vehicles with tinted windows and no license plates parked near the hospital’s emergency entrance.
“I thought they were going to raid the hospital or something,” he recalled.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to explain why officers were stationed outside the emergency room.
DHS insisted that “ICE does not target hospitals, schools, or churches.”
But the operation sparked an immediate confrontation with the community. Roughly 30 residents and passersby gathered as agents carried out their activity. Video recorded by Gasca’s cousin, Michelle Rivera, shows protesters shouting at officers as they pin someone to the ground.
The hospital stressed that it had no role in the enforcement operation.
“White Memorial does not participate in immigration enforcement,” hospital president Daniel Fontoura said, adding that the hospital would not allow such activity to “compromise our commitment to patient care and safety.”
And Los Angeles wasn’t the only place where families were suddenly confronted with the consequences of Trump’s crackdown.
Advocates reported arrests stretching from California to Michigan and Massachusetts. In Florida, people have reportedly been detained during routine trips to supermarkets, pharmacies and gas stations — and even when showing up for scheduled appointments with immigration officials.
María Bilbao, a campaign coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee in Miami, said she has received at least one call every day from someone detained in South Florida since the election.
“Everything remains exactly the same. The arrests have not ceased at all,” Bilbao said.
Florida Highway Patrol officers and ICE agents have detained people in their vehicles and at everyday locations. Even immigrants who were complying with supervision requirements and reporting for scheduled appointments at ICE’s Miami office have been arrested, according to Bilbao.
Then there was the couple traveling to a funeral.
Gustavo Romanello and Agustin Baccega, an Argentine married couple living in Orlando, were arrested Saturday at Phoenix airport while traveling to attend a funeral for a mutual friend who had died the day before.
The two men had entered the United States about six years ago and held work permits while pursuing asylum, according to family friend Jonathan Batchelor. They worked as acrobats in Florida and had no criminal records, he said.
Batchelor was on the phone with the couple when the arrest happened.
As they left the airport, two casually dressed officers approached and asked whether one of them was Agustin Baccega. Batchelor said he heard an officer tell the couple, “Asylum seekers are not in the United States legally.”
Then, as the officers took Baccega into custody, Romanello apparently tried to understand what was happening and asked how he could collect his belongings.
Batchelor said he then heard an officer ask, “Oh, do you have another set of handcuffs? This is another one.”
The voices grew distant before the call abruptly ended.
Both men remain in immigration detention centers.
“This is just taking good people who have been following the rules out of their lives and out of the lives of those who rely upon them and care about them,” Batchelor said.
DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the couple’s arrests.
In Alabama, meanwhile, two 19-year-old brothers from Venezuela were detained while driving back to college just one day after the midterm elections.
Luis and Carlos Orta-Santoro were headed back to Wallace State Community College in Hanceville after visiting their parents when they were stopped in a small city in central Alabama.
The brothers, both soccer players at the college, have lived in the United States for four years. Relatives say they have pending asylum applications, valid work permits and no criminal records.
Both are now being held at an immigration detention facility.
“Our family is devastated,” their aunt, Carolina Orta, said.
DHS offered a different account, saying the brothers entered the country legally but later “overstayed in defiance of our laws.” The department said an immigration judge would hear their case and emphasized that pending asylum applications do not automatically grant legal status.
Wallace State Community College expressed support for the students.
“Both young men are valued members of the Wallace State community, and our thoughts are with them during this difficult time,” the school said. “We sincerely hope for a positive resolution to their situation.”
The arrests and enforcement operations are unfolding against a striking political backdrop.
After Republicans were walloped in the midterms and Democrats secured control of the next Congress, Trump suggested his immigration crackdown may have been “too tough.” In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, recorded Friday, he said he would “love to do something on immigration” and suggested it might be time to sit down with Democrats.
But whatever softer tone Trump briefly tried out, his administration’s actions tell a different story.
Just hours after those comments, Trump named Stephen Miller — the architect of his hardline immigration agenda — as his new chief of staff.
And Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made clear that the deportation campaign would continue without interruption.
“Deportations will continue,” Mullin wrote online the day after the election. He warned that ICE takes no days off, adding that enforcement continues on “Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Election Day.”
So much for a change in direction.
Trump may have hinted that his immigration crackdown needs a rethink after voters delivered a major rebuke to Republicans. But across the country, families are still being separated, young students are being detained, and masked federal agents are showing up in hospitals and airports.
