Trump's evil mass deportation policy will fail and his circus of executive orders are a diversion to deflect his policy failures

Trump’s immigration crackdown relies on fear — and silence
Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy is not just about arrests and deportations — it’s also about controlling the narrative (IOW "censorship")

Evilism Trumpziism 

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Marcia Garcia:  When word of an immigration raid in East Boston spread like wildfire on social media in late January, Alberto Vasallo III set out to do what the federal government has refused to do: Verify the truth.

Armed with a camera, Vasallo — CEO of the Spanish-language news outlet El Mundo Boston — rushed to Blue Line stations where raids were supposedly happening on January 29th, hoping to capture evidence of the alleged enforcement action.

But there was nothing to film. The rumor appeared to be false.

Trump promised a sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants, replacing the policy of previous administrations that focused on those who have committed crimes.

Those promises are what makes it totally understandable for immigrants to fear what ICE agents might be up to in East Boston, an area with a large immigrant population.

But there is some evidence to suggest that the Trump administration is trying to create an impression of widespread enforcement that goes well beyond the facts, and that it actually suits the administration’s purposes to let unfounded rumors about enforcement actions — whatever their origin — spread.

This is the reality of Trump 2.0: An immigration enforcement strategy that isn’t just about arrests and deportations but is also about fear and ambiguity. By refusing to confirm or debunk viral claims, ICE is allowing misinformation to flourish, leaving immigrant communities in a state of constant anxiety.

The administration doesn’t have to actually conduct mass raids to spread fear — silence and uncertainty can do the job as effectively. For the administration, it’s a twofer: the rumors worry immigrants, while making Trump supporters imagine he’s following through on his promises.

That might be why ICE has stonewalled journalists, including my Globe colleague Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, refusing to clarify critical details about the agency’s own reported nationwide arrest numbers. Key missing information includes any alleged criminal offenses of those detained and the specific locations of the arrests.

ICE did not respond to a request to confirm local enforcement activity over the past three weeks. Based solely on the agency’s press releases, the ICE field office in Boston in charge of removal operations has arrested 10 “illegally present” immigrants since Jan. 22, all of whom, according to ICE, had criminal backgrounds. That sounds like business as usual, not the kind of vast dragnet that MAGA supporters seem to want and immigrants fear

Austin Kocher, an immigration enforcement researcher and assistant professor at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University in New York, told me that ICE could be far more transparent. 

Instead, he said, the agency seems more invested in shaping perception through social media than in responding to journalists' questions.

While some of the immigration arrests are “just routine enforcement that happens all the time,” Kocher said, ICE is “making it more sensationalized than ever.” When you “have ICE going out with celebrities like Dr. Phil, it just sends a message that you’re not taking the job seriously.”

By withholding basic information, ICE is making it harder for the public to trust what little it does release. “I don’t know that these agencies are engaging in propaganda at the moment — that is, misinformation that’s put out by the government itself,” Kocher said. “But we have to be sensitive to the fact that we could be going down that road.”

Vasallo, who also hosts a daily morning show, “La Hora del Café,” understands how easily falsehoods spread. He knew the reports of ICE raids in the Blue Line T stations were probably bogus. 

Still, he took his cameras to Maverick Station in East Boston, showing his audience in real time that no ICE agents were present. His video has racked up over 140,000 plays on Facebook.

That same day, he visited two other locations nearby that had also been the subject of viral ICE activity reports.

I asked Vasallo if he worries that, by constantly addressing these rumors, he might inadvertently amplify fears rather than calm them.

“I think that this is exactly what we need to do,” Vasallo said. “It’s better to debunk [fake news] because you’re showing to thousands of people, ‘look, it’s not true.‘ What if you leave it alone? It just gets out of hand. The amount of misinformation travels so much faster than the truth.”

That’s precisely the point. Misinformation about immigration enforcement doesn’t need official confirmation to be effective — just silence from those in power. By refusing to engage with the media and clarify the facts, ICE is not merely failing to correct the record; it is weaponizing uncertainty. The result is an information vacuum where fear festers, allowing Trump to maintain the illusion of sweeping crackdowns without needing to carry them out at scale. Fear, apparently, is the policy.

Marcela García is a Boston Globe columnist. She can be reached at marcela.garcia@globe.com..