Is immigration enforcement 'a purge of undesirables?' — Redditors' questions answered

The deaths Alex Pretti and Renee Good at the hands federal immigration officers in Minneapolis have brought increased scrutiny of the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign and enforcement tactics.

But while all eyes are on Minnesota, President Donald Trump’s immigration policy is playing out across the country, raising questions around states' roles in pushing back, how the immigration court system functions and the impact these policies are having on communities.

In a Reddit AMA on r/politics KPBS answered some of these questions and more. Scroll for a recap.

Arts & Culture

Trump 2.0: A conversation on immigration and the border impact

Adrian Villalobos

Alan Lilienthal

Chrissy Nguyen

Gustavo Solis

Julio C. Ortiz-Franco

Natalie Gonzalez Rodriguez

Listen • 44:27

Minnesota actually has a relatively small undocumented population. So the choice to carry out operations so intensely there was political from the very start. A lot of it had more to do, as we've seen, with some vicious lies told about the state's Somali population. And it seems like the Sioux have gotten caught up in it as well.

— Adam Isacson | Director of the Washington Office on Latina America’s (WOLA) Defense Oversight program

You’re right, the number of immigration judges is not sufficient to process the historic backlog of cases in the immigration courts. And this administration has recently been firing immigration judges — seemingly those whose rulings it doesn’t like (e.g., frequently granting asylum). The San Francisco immigration court — one of the nation’s largest — was recently whittled from 21 judges to 3, and then the Department of Justice (which runs the immigration court system) announced it will close the S.F. court this year.

The immigration courts handle cases of people that ICE is trying to deport. Some entered the country illegally but have requested asylum here because they fear persecution in their home countries. Under U.S. and international law, it doesn’t matter how they got here. If their asylum claim is deemed credible, they get their day in court to have the case considered. Others in immigration court might have a claim to legal status through a family member’s petition or another means.

At the same time, there’s a bottleneck in visas for people to enter legally and obtain green cards through sponsorship by an employer or a family member who’s a U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident. The legal immigration system hasn’t been overhauled since 1965 and our society and economy (and world migration trends) have changed a lot since then. It’s true that sometimes people come illegally because the wait times to enter legally are so long. Others don’t have a path to enter with a legal visa, so illegal immigration seems to be their only option.

Having more judges won’t solve the visa bottleneck problem. But it could help move more cases through the immigration courts. However, the National Association of Immigration Judges points out that immigration courts are not independent courts. They want Congress to make them independent of the Department of Justice, so their work (and who gets hired and fired) cannot be politicized by the attorney general and the president.

And yes, there have been instances of naturalization ceremonies being canceled — and individuals being pulled out of those ceremonies — as well as cases where individuals were arrested at their green card interviews. The recourse would probably be to sue in federal court (typically with a lawyer’s help). We know of one case where a federal judge naturalized a person who sued.

The oath of allegiance, the final step in becoming a U.S. citizen, can be administered by an authorized officer of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an immigration judge, or a federal judge.

— Tyche Hendricks | Senior editor for immigration at KQED Public Radio in the Bay Area

There have been a number of cases where contempt proceedings have been considered, but there are several steps to be taken before actually getting to contempt, and I do not think that cases have actually gotten there yet. In a case about the use of the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority used to send Venezuelans to a notorious jail in El Salvador, the judge has moved towards opening contempt proceedings, but there have been appeals and the case is still ongoing. In other cases involving immigration detention, for example, they have moved so quickly that they have been closed before reaching the contempt proceedings stage.

— Kathleen Bush-Joseph | Lawyer and Policy Analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute

It’s true, some Democratic-led states like California have “sanctuary” laws limiting the use of local/state resources for federal immigration enforcement. And that means, in many cases, they won’t automatically turn people they arrest over to ICE. But there are typically exceptions, where local police DO work with ICE in cases of serious or violent criminals. Here in California, the state prisons routinely turn over non-citizen felons for deportation after they’ve served their sentences. The restriction on cooperation is not what the federal government wants, but they’ve navigated this for years.

We’re also seeing pushback from local police and the state corrections system in Minnesota, challenging false information that ICE is putting out about who they are aiming to arrest. In a number of cases, the person ICE is calling a hardened criminal may have only a minor misdemeanor record, or the arrest they publicize in a press release may actually be someone that prison officials handed over under routine protocols, not someone ICE picked up in a raid.

Tensions between state/local governments and the federal government are definitely increasing. It’s not clear where that’s headed.

— Tyche Hendricks | Senior editor for immigration at KQED Public Radio in the Bay Area

As of October 2025, there were still 2.4 million pending asylum claims at the immigration courts. Since Trump took office, immigration judges have issued a record high number of denials of asylum claims, tens of thousands, but judges still cannot keep up with all of the cases that are pending, so many people have their next court date set for a year or more out. A major change has been that immigration judges are closing out thousands of asylum cases without holding hearings, sometimes because ICE wants to send people to third countries. Attorneys are arguing that this violates immigration law and procedures, and there is a case challenging the practice in federal court. Many of these denials and case closures are being appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the appellate body for the immigration courts, and the BIA now has a record-high number of appeals pending: 203,000. For more on changes at the immigration courts, please see Tyche’s answer to this earlier question.

— Kathleen Bush-Joseph | Lawyer and Policy Analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute

I think we’re going to see OHSS soon forced to resume publishing these very helpful monthly reports. The DHS appropriations bill — the one that is unlikely to pass before January 30 — has a provision requiring OHSS to resume publishing these reports going back to 2025. (See Page 9 of the bill’s explanatory statement here.) My guess is appropriators from both parties want these reports to resume, it’s an easy ask.

— Adam Isacson | Director of the Washington Office on Latina America’s (WOLA) Defense Oversight program

It would absolutely be helpful to have more information about the data included in filings and how it is produced, from all sides. A major problem, though, is that most judges are not data experts, nor are they immigration experts, so oftentimes what can be most helpful is clear explanations of what the parties think the data means — there can, of course, be multiple interpretations of the same datasets. I will note that I have even seen government and immigration advocates’ attorneys struggle to make sense of various sources of data, but I am hopeful that, as there is more and more litigation on immigration issues, familiarity with at least the most common datasets will increase — for example, ICE immigration detention data releases that show how many people are detained and where.

— Kathleen Bush-Joseph | Lawyer and Policy Analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute

States are taking wildly different approaches to immigration enforcement. It’s largely broken down along partisan lines, with Republican states like Florida and Texas embracing the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Florida has embraced the 287(g) program, which essentially deputizes local officers to work as immigration enforcement agents. In those states, getting pulled over for a minor traffic infraction can lead to ICE detention.

Conversely, states like California have tried to curb the cooperation between local and federal law enforcement through certain sanctuary policies. California’s SB-54 generally prohibits local resources from being used for immigration enforcement, but it includes carveouts that allow local sheriffs to transfer inmates with certain criminal convictions to ICE custody. Here in San Diego, the local sheriff transfers dozens of inmates to ICE custody every year — some of them with convictions for DUI, assault, murder, sexual assault and non-violent drug charges.

Regarding detention centers, it is incredibly difficult for reporters to find out whether they are following federal detention standards. Lack of access and transparency has been a huge problem, particularly in privately run detention centers. The federal government hasn’t published inspection reports since November 2022, when Biden was still in office. We do know that 32 people died in ICE detention last year. It was the most since 2004. And this year, in-custody ICE deaths are on pace to surpass 100.

I wouldn’t say the system is corrupt. But it is certainly overwhelmed by the record number of people being detained.

The immigration attorney you talked to is right. It takes multiple years and thousands of dollars to become a U.S. citizen.

Experts have argued that the length of time has become a “pull” factor that encourages people to cross the border illegally because they know that it will take years to adjudicate their case. In recognition of that dynamic, one possible reform is to hire more immigration judges and streamline the adjudication process; the thinking behind that is that immigrants will not want to risk crossing the border illegally if they know that their case will be over within six months instead of six years.

Average citizens are helping in all sorts of ways. Here in San Diego, people volunteer to attend immigration court hearings and document any immigration arrests. There are also local mutual aid networks that organize food and clothing drives for undocumented immigrant families who are too afraid to leave their homes.

I have also interviewed people who find their own method of resistance, like software engineers who are publicizing federal immigration data to increase public awareness.

— Gustavo Solis | Investigative border reporter at KPBS in San Diego