Trump Says ICE Has Not Gone Far Enough

Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement / Public domain

Donald Trump sat down with Norah O'Donnell on 60 Minutes and she asked him a simple question. Had the ICE raids gone too far? He did not pause. He did not soften it. He said they had not gone far enough. Then he made it clear he wants the crackdown to go further still. That is not a policy detail. That is a promise.

Think about what not far enough means in real life. It means the raids we have already seen are only the start in his mind. More agents in more neighborhoods. More families separated at routine check ins. More children taken while a parent stands right there with the paperwork. He watched all of that happen and his response was that it was not enough.

The question mattered because millions of Americans have watched this crackdown and felt sick about it. They have seen workplaces raided at dawn and neighbors pulled off the street. They have seen a Berkeley student detained at an airport. They have seen an eight year old taken at a routine check in. They have seen agents block an ambulance bay outside a hospital. Trump looked at all of that and said, more.

His supporters will try to spin this as strength. It is not strength. Strength is a country that can secure its borders without terrorizing its own communities. Strength is a government that follows the law and treats people like human beings. What Trump is describing is a government that has decided fear is the tool and cruelty is the measure of success. When a president says the raids have not gone far enough, every agent in the field hears permission.

And let us be honest about who pays the price. It is not the wealthy. It is not the people who hire undocumented workers to clean their hotels and build their towers. It is working families. It is parents who have lived here for years, paying taxes, raising kids who are American citizens. The crackdown does not target cartels. It targets the people easiest to find.

Democrats in Congress have been pushing back, and Hakeem Jeffries has said there will not be a dime for this deportation machine. That fight matters now more than ever, because Trump just told us what he plans to do with the money. More raids. More detentions. More families torn apart. The midterm results showed voters are tired of this. People want a country that is safe and humane at the same time.

So what happens next? Trump will keep pushing, because this is who he is and what he ran on. Congress will have to decide whether to fund it. The courts will keep hearing cases. And communities will keep standing up for their neighbors, the way they have in Chicago and Los Angeles and Berkeley and San Diego. The president said it out loud. He thinks the raids have not gone far enough. The rest of us have to decide whether we agree. We do not. Not even close.

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