President Donald Trump says the immigration crackdowns aren’t going anywhere—and in his words, “haven’t gone far enough.”
In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump defended the escalating raids being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the country. His message was blunt: mass deportations are back, and the president wants them even tougher.
“Many of them are murderers,” Trump told anchor Norah O’Donnell. “Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals.”
But the scenes unfolding nationwide tell a darker story. ICE agents have stormed residential neighborhoods, smashed car windows to grab drivers, and fired tear gas in communities from Texas to Illinois. In one viral video, a mother was tackled to the ground in front of her children and a crowd of journalists.
There wasn’t even a pause on Halloween. Despite a plea from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to “let kids be kids” for the weekend, raids continued in Chicago, with agents seen detaining parents as children trick or treated nearby.
And it’s not just families being caught up in the chaos. The Daily Beast reported that a security guard at a superstore owned by one of Trump’s political allies was fired after filming a violent Department of Homeland Security raid in the parking lot—footage that later went viral.
Pressed by O’Donnell about the growing backlash, Trump didn’t flinch.
“You have to get the people out,” he said, claiming his agenda had been “held back by the judges, by the liberal judges” appointed by his predecessors, former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
O’Donnell pointed out that many deportees under Trump’s second term aren’t violent offenders—they’re nannies, landscapers, farmworkers, even relatives of service members.
“Landscapers who are criminals, yeah,” Trump shot back.
Asked whether he planned to deport people with no criminal record, Trump replied, “We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be that, ‘You came into the country illegally, you’re going to go out.’”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker
Since returning to the White House, Trump has ordered ICE to ramp up operations nationwide, deploying masked agents into so-called sanctuary cities in an effort to accelerate removals. According to The Hill, Chicago and Boston have seen some of the sharpest upticks in enforcement this week alone.
Democratic governors, including Pritzker and California’s Gavin Newsom, have slammed the raids affecting their respective states. In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie warned last month that the deployment of federal officers into his city would lead to “chaos and violence” and not actually reduce crime.
“In cities across the country, masked immigration officials are deployed to use aggressive enforcement tactics that instill fear, so people don’t feel safe going about their daily lives,” he said.
Internal ICE data obtained by NBC News underscores the gap between Trump’s rhetoric and reality: In the first five months of his second term, only 6% of those detained had homicide convictions, and just 11% had been convicted of sexual assault.
Behind the scenes, the administration has begun replacing regional ICE directors with Border Patrol officials known for their aggressive enforcement style—part of a broader effort to intensify the pace of deportations nationwide.
Legal and political pushback are already mounting. Civil rights groups and local governments are considering lawsuits that claim constitutional violations and unlawful federal overreach, while Democrats in Congress warn that the tactics could spiral out of control.
But Trump appears undeterred. His administration insists the crackdown is both necessary and long overdue. In short, Trump’s immigration machine is back in motion—louder and far less restrained than before.
