The New Deportation Machinery in New York – Trump’s Second Offensive and the Return of Fear

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the atmosphere in New York City has changed noticeably. Not through sudden mass raids, as many had feared, but through a bureaucracy that has lost its face. In the midst of what is probably the world’s most diverse metropolis, the US government is relying on an almost silent strategy: they no longer search – they let people come to them. The reporting obligations at the federal building on Federal Plaza have long become synonymous with fear. Anyone who, as a migrant, has an appointment at the immigration office or is called to court can disappear from one moment to the next. The statistics confirm what observers and those affected have long known: more than half of those detained had no criminal record whatsoever. Nevertheless, the numbers have exploded. In just five months after Trump took office, more than 2,300 people were arrested in the region – double the number from the period before.

What is particularly perfidious is the discrepancy between public rhetoric and actual practice. While the administration continues to talk about “priority for serious criminals” and simulates a martial stance with published mug shots, in reality it increasingly affects people with no criminal record at all. The logic is simple: anyone who cannot prove legal status ends up in the crosshairs.

The face of this offensive mostly remains invisible. Behind the case numbers are people, families, biographies. More and more often, lawyers report cases in which even long-term tolerated, well-integrated or seriously ill persons are sent to detention centers – often hundreds of kilometers away, without access to lawyers or family. The deportation machinery now also grabs those whose fate was previously decided by leeway, humanity or simply a lack of resources. The system is striking: those in the wrong place at the wrong time – such as an innocent relative during a raid or a witness at court – are taken away. The agency calls this “collateral arrests.” For those affected, it is a shock to their very existence. Even long-term residents who demonstrably pose no danger are now targeted, because the Trump administration is enforcing a new definition of “illegality” – one that knows no exceptions.

While New York in recent years was the last hope for many, the city has now become a symbol of an administration that systematically erases humanity. The cells and detention centers in the Northeast, Louisiana, or Texas are filling up. Deportations often take place in expedited proceedings, sometimes before the legal review, which under Biden often led to tolerance, is even completed. Today, those who are deported disappear from the statistics – and from the public eye.

The social consequences are severe. Families are torn apart, children are left behind, social networks collapse. States like Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras or Venezuela are particularly affected – but so are people from Bangladesh, Russia or China. The political message: deterrence through unpredictability, deportation as an act of administrative force, not as the result of an individual review.

This new practice of deportation is more than a legal tightening. It is an attempt to define migration as a structural risk and no longer as a human challenge. In doing so, New York, once a symbol of advancement and integration, is moving into the focus of a system shift: from a city of refuge to a place of fear – and of permanent insecurity for all those who “do not fit the pattern.”

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