Trump’s machinery of fear
As Donald Trump nears the 100th day of his second presidency, America holds its breath — a nation once hailed as a shining city upon a hill by Ronald Reagan, whose portrait now watches from the walls of the Oval Office, is suspended in the cold, relentless machinery of mass deportations and institutionalized fear.
The promise of refuge has curdled into a spectacle of raids and forced removals, often without the hope of a fair trial. The golden door once held open by myth now slams shut with mechanical finality — not just for migrants, but for anyone the administration views in violation of its hardening mantra.
Across towns and cities, the hum of daily life has faded into the quiet terror of dawn raids and families pulled from their homes, as if history were unraveling in reverse. Since returning to office on 20 January, Trump has moved with ruthless precision, carrying out deportations not merely with force, but with a cold, deliberate cruelty. Immigration raids, once sporadic, are now sweep through towns like sudden storms. Families are torn from sidewalks and supermarkets, homes emptied before dawn, leaving behind only the silence of what was.
At the heart of this new order is a political pledge Trump made — and has kept with a chilling commitment — to rid the country of what he calls “the uninvited.” Protections have been dismantled, sanctuary cities starved of funds, detention centres swollen beyond capacity. The numbers are grim and growing — each one a name, a story, a life unspooling under the weight of his executive order.
Inside places of worship, universities, schools, and neighborhood kitchens, whispers replace laughter. Migrants and even foreign students are being asked to memorize legal hotlines like prayer by their loved ones. Even those untouched by the raids speak softer now.
In the grand halls of Washington, Trump’s political allies — and those who have cheered him for years — hail the deportations as a restoration of law and American pride. But along the country’s edges, another truth haunts millions: anyone who dares to publicly challenge the administration’s hardening vision risks finding themselves in troubled waters. The American republic is being redefined not by makeshift executive orders alone, but by the slow, relentless corrosion of trust, community, and belonging.
Across communities, the fear has become deeply personal. “I am a Muslim green card holder. That is no longer a protection under this administration. My worst fear is that they might be offended by some of my views on Israel’s assault on Gaza and deport me straight from the airport if I try to visit my family back home,” said Junaid Alam*, a 32-year-old engineer who recently migrated to California.
The early months of Trump’s return to power have only deepened these anxieties. In the first 50 days of the administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made 32,809 enforcement arrests — nearly equalling the total number of at-large arrests, 33,242, carried out over the entire fiscal year 2024, according to data published by the Department of Homeland Security. A force of terror, ICE deported around 11,000 migrants in Trump’s first full month back in office — almost matching the 12,000 deportations recorded under Joe Biden in February 2024.
When it comes to removals, the figures remain as troubling as those from the previous year. What is far more concerning, however, is the cruel and indiscriminate nature of these deportations — often carried out without the basic right to a fair trial or the opportunity to appear before a judge.
In a press briefing beneath a portrait of Reagan — the president long remembered for his rhetoric around the “American Dream”, a vision where immigrants were integral to the nation’s vitality and strength — Trump once again insisted that undocumented immigrants should not be entitled to such trials. He argued that his administration should have the power to deport them without judicial oversight.
These remarks came amid yet another volley of criticism directed at the judiciary, which Trump has accused of obstructing his deportation efforts. As part of his broader anti-immigrant rhetoric, the president claimed that countries like Congo and Venezuela had emptied their prisons into the United States — a baseless accusation that has been widely debunked by the media. Nevertheless, Trump insisted that this supposed influx justified bypassing constitutional due process in order to expel individuals more swiftly.
“I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out, and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Trump told reporters. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.” He further argued that the “very bad people” he was targeting for removal included killers, drug dealers, and the mentally ill.
And, in true Trump fashion, he clashed with the judiciary — or perhaps, orchestrated an incident designed to sow even more fear.
A Wisconsin judge, who has spent much of her decade-long legal career advocating for low-income and marginalised communities, found herself arrested on charges of obstructing immigration enforcement. The charge sheet detailed how Dugan allegedly escorted an undocumented immigrant through a side door in her courtroom, while agents waited in the public hallway to arrest him.
For Juan Carlos*, a Venezuelan migrant, few things are more unsettling than the sight of a judge in handcuffs — an image he never imagined he would see in the United States. “If a judge is not safe, how can I sleep at night?” he says. “My green card is no guarantee of a permanent stay or even citizenship — I have no rights.”
The judge in question, Hannah Dugan, was arrested on suspicion of having “intentionally misdirected federal agents,” according to Kash Patel, the FBI director, who announced the development on social media even before the charges were formally unsealed. In keeping with the administration’s shock-and-awe style, Patel posted a photo of Dugan in handcuffs soon after her arrest — a grim image that quickly ricocheted across news cycles.
The message was unmistakable -- the White House is determined to sideline the judiciary and fast-track deportations, removing even the faintest possibility of legal recourse.
“We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’” the president declared during another press briefing. “The trial is going to take two years. We’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.”
The remarks ignited a furious backlash. On social media, Representative Jonathan L. Jackson, Democrat of Illinois, wrote: “That’s straight-up #dictator talk. Due process isn’t optional because it’s inconvenient. This is the United States, not a banana republic. If you want to shred the Constitution, just say so.”
Yet such entreaties appear to fall on deaf ears, as the administration presses ahead with a vision of governance where fear, not law, defines the boundaries of belonging.
How does Trump get away with deportations?
According to legal and constitutional experts interviewed by The Express Tribune, the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation drive is succeeding not through new laws or sweeping legislative reforms, but through the calculated erosion of long-standing legal guardrails — a quiet dismantling of the constitutional protections that once constrained executive power.
At the heart of this campaign, they said, lies a strategic exploitation of administrative discretion. By broadening enforcement priorities to include virtually any undocumented person — not just those convicted of serious crimes — the administration has weaponized existing immigration structures, turning routine civil enforcement into a machinery of fear. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — better known, with a chilling familiarity, as ICE — no longer needs to prove a major infraction; mere presence without papers is now sufficient grounds for deportation.
Compounding this is the deliberate straining of the immigration court system. By flooding dockets with cases while simultaneously arguing that due process is dispensable, the White House has manufactured a crisis that justifies its own demands for swifter, trial-free deportations. Lengthy backlogs, legal experts said, are no longer seen as a flaw in need of reform, but as a political weapon to push for mass expulsions without judicial review.
Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters have aggressively reinterpreted vague legal tools to bypass standard protections. Expedited removal — once a narrowly applied authority near the border — has been dramatically expanded deep into the country’s interior. Migrants who have lived in the United States for years, and who might once have had the chance to argue their case before a judge, are now exposed to immediate removal at the discretion of a low-level ICE officer.
Finally, the administration’s rhetoric has helped cement a culture of fear. The publicised arrest of judges like Hannah Dugan, the framing of immigrants as a criminal invasion, and the open contempt for constitutional norms have cast a chilling shadow — not only over immigrant communities, but over the very institutions meant to protect them. Legal experts now warn that what was once an immigration system — flawed but still tethered to the rule of law — is being recast as an enforcement state, where the mere invocation of danger is enough to strip away fundamental rights.
“When I say I have no rights, I mean no rights at all. If an officer decides to arrest me and take me to a detention center, no one — not even my wife, who is a US citizen — can do anything to protect me. I could be deported in a heartbeat,” said Carlos, his voice quivering during a phone interview.
Are citizens protected?
In one of his most chilling dystopian works, George Orwell warned that true power is not a tool to achieve any higher purpose, but an end in itself. Once in control, those who wield power will bend everything — truth, law, and morality — to preserve their dominance, indifferent to the toll it takes on others. This unsettling framework is increasingly relevant in the context of President Trump’s administration, as it pushes the limits of what was once seen as unthinkable.
Earlier this month, just before a press briefing with El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, Trump raised the specter of something previously unimaginable -- the notion of detaining US citizens and sending them to prisons in El Salvador.
“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places,” Trump remarked, seemingly suggesting the need for additional space to house American citizens abroad.
Already, reports from NPR indicate that hundreds of people — detained for charges ranging from immigration violations to gang affiliations — have been flown from US soil to maximum-security prisons in El Salvador. Trump’s latest comments signal a troubling new chapter, one where no one is safe from the ever-expanding apparatus of control his administration continues to implement. According to legal experts tracking his moves, the machinery of fear and punishment could stretch even further, with US citizens now directly in its sights.
“It’s obviously unconstitutional, obviously illegal. There’s no authority in any US law to deport US citizens, and certainly not to imprison them in a foreign country,” David Bier, a scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, D.C., recently told NPR.
The blueprint
The much-debated Project 2025, now a central pillar of Trump’s vision for his second term, represents a radical reimagining of his administration’s approach to immigration enforcement. More than just a policy proposal, Project 2025 is increasingly viewed as the blueprint for a fast-tracked, sweeping removal of undocumented immigrants, prioritising speed over fairness. Legal experts warn that, at its core, the project aims to dismantle critical safeguards within the immigration system, stripping away judicial oversight and bypassing the protections that once upheld basic individual rights.
Under this structure, deportations are expedited without the checks that have historically served as a bulwark against arbitrary state action. Critics argue that Project 2025 risks giving rise to a mass deportation machine — one that not only ignores individual rights, but actively erodes the legal structures designed to prevent such unchecked powers.
For the Trump administration, there appears to be no turning back. According to a recent report by the Washington Post, the White House plans to use this blueprint to carry out up to one million deportations in the first year — a timeline now just 265 days away.
*Names have been changed to protect sources’ identities