Immigration crackdown, Part 1: How we got here
By now, most Mississippians have heard that Operation Swamp Sweep has landed in the state, bringing with it an influx of agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and stoking fears of arrest and deportation among immigrant communities.
Both secular and religious organizations have stepped up to assist those targeted—particularly Latino immigrants—by training bystanders to document ICE interactions with immigrants; organizing safe transportation to bus stops, schools, court dates and doctor’s appointments; delivering groceries; assisting with preparation of legal documents in the event of family separation; and providing emergency legal and other advice.
In this series, we will look at the experiences of immigrants throughout the state as they endure Swamp Sweep as well as the responses of community organizers and social service agencies to the crisis. In this installment, we explore how immigration policies have changed in recent years and how immigrants have come to be more fearful than ever before.
The last major overhaul of the nation’s immigration system was the Immigration Act of 1990, which expanded options for legal immigration (i.e., for skilled and educated workers) and created Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for those immigrants already in the United States who would face severe hardship if forced to return to their home country. In 1996, Congress put restrictions in place that would keep unauthorized immigrants from using family relationships to obtain legal status; emphasized law enforcement in the immigration process; and made removal proceedings faster and more widespread. Following 9/11, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 shifted the focus of immigration policy toward national security, border security and counterterrorism.
In 2006, President Barack Obama introduced DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected from deportation those undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Trump attempted to rescind DACA during his first term, but in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected DACA rescission. More than 500,000 current DACA recipients are allowed to renew their lawful presence status every two years. Such status protects DACA recipients from deportation and provides them permission to work. Currently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is not processing new applications for DACA and has not done so since October 2017. As of March 2025, there were 1,130 DACA recipients living in Mississippi.
The most notable recent change in U.S. immigration policy relates to Trump’s emphasis on detaining and deporting more immigrants. During his first term, DHS ended the practice of releasing into the country those undocumented immigrants seeking legal immigration status. Beginning in 2004, with the Alternatives to Detention Program, those asylum seekers and families applying for legal status were allowed to enter the country pending their immigration court proceedings and even apply for permission to work. This program reduced federal spending and even increased revenue, as DHS was not paying for immigrants’ food, shelter, clothing or healthcare, and working parolees were able to pay income, sales and other taxes and to support their families financially. Trump ended this policy in 2016 and further emphasized detention in 2025 with an executive order calling for the detention of immigrants arrested “on suspicion of violating Federal or State law, until such time as they are removed from the United States.” As of September, the average cost of detaining one immigrant was $152 per day.
Trump’s emphasis on detaining immigrants, including those simply awaiting court proceedings to obtain legal status, is a major reason for the dramatic increase in federal spending on immigration reflected in H.R. 1, also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed by Congress in July 2025. H.R. 1 provides for a three-fold increase in federal spending—to $45 billion—on immigrant detention facilities alone during the next three years. The entire immigration spending package in H.R. 1 totals a whopping $170 billion, which is more than the budget for the nation’s entire military force.
Another component of that $170 billion is $30 billion for detention and deportation, which enables DHS to deport more immigrants more quickly. Expedited removal originally allowed lower-level immigration officers to remove immigrants before they ever see an immigration judge when those immigrants recently arrived in the U.S. and were found in close proximity to the border. Over time, expedited removal came to include those who had been in the U.S. longer and further away from the border. In January 2025, Trump expanded expedited removal to include even those immigrants going through regular deportation proceedings, awaiting a hearing before a judge. So, a lower-level immigration officer can now determine on their own that an immigrant awaiting a scheduled hearing before a judge can be summarily deported before that hearing before a judge even takes place.
As expected, Trump’s policies have resulted in an increase in the number of immigrants in detention from 39,000 on an average day in January 2025 to an expected 107,000 in January 2026. Removals of immigrants through September 2025 reached somewhere between 340,000 (according to the Migration Policy Institute) and 527,000 (according to DHS and including self-deportations). The total number of deportations for all of 2024 was approximately 271,000, which was the highest tally since 2014, when 316,000 immigrants were deported under the Obama administration.
Given the significant increases in detention and deportation of immigrants, it’s no wonder that fear has gripped many immigrant communities. In Part 2, we’ll look at what immigrants are experiencing and how allies are responding.
Image: Unidentified ICE agent (via CNB News/Creative Commons)
So disgusting and immoral.