Trump’s latest directive is sure to send ripples across the nation. Through Truth Social, the president issued a direct order to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prioritize deportations in major Democratic-led cities.
The timing was the aspect that was most fascinating, however. The announcement came right in the midst of the growing “No Kings” protests that have been happening in pockets around the nation. The protests have since gained international attention due to widespread celebrity presence. Trump was well aware of this and, seemingly as a response, issued this very questionable directive as he was on his way to the G7 meeting with fellow heads of state.
President Trump was already well on his way to walking back some of his immigration policies due to how they were affecting farmers in pockets where he garnered heavy political support. It started becoming a dilemma — MAGA followers wanted mass deportation, but not of the immigrants that make their lives easier. So Trump has clearly come up with a hacky solution.
In a statement that has since been posted on Philip Lewis’ X account, Trump called for ICE to focus specifically on cities such as Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles. The extremely targeted approach will shift the current policy of the administration — from a blanket immigration policy to one of selective enforcement — because, Trump claims, the radical left Democrats “hate our country” and therefore “they believe in open borders, transgender for everybody, and men playing in women’s sports.” Trump then added, “You never hear about sanctuary cities in our heartland.”
Trump is now directing ICE to focus on Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York: pic.twitter.com/Wj0MnYo3Fc
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 16, 2025
Connecting this to the bigger picture, Trump has always been for mass deportation. His administration — through figures such as Stephen Miller and Tom Homan — have already gone on record to state, in various ways, that not even the law would stand in their way. But when Trump realized that, in some very specific ways, immigrant labor is vital to industries like farming, he fully pivoted into just showing that even his most passionate policy stances veer into the medium of weaponization or simply political theater.
It’s not even clear how transgender ties into any of this, but even that would not be the first time he’s tied it into policy. Before the LA protests, Trump was already at loggerheads with Governor Gavin Newsom over university funding. Reports suggested that Trump wanted to cut funding to the state because of its transgender policy — a move that has to be affecting his relationship with his moderate allies like Bill Maher. It’s now clear that he doesn’t just attack his political opponents, but rather anyone who doesn’t ideologically align with his administration.
President Trump is slowly creating two tiers of Americans — atop, there are people and cities that support him, and below are people whose rights are debatable. The targeted policies — and the idea of viewing his second administration as a force one must curry favor with — is one of the core reasons the No Kings protests seemingly won’t die down any time soon.
President Trump has called his mass deportation program the largest in history. He carries it with pride — no matter how many laws or families stand in his way, he’s clearly chosen this path as his legacy.
