The year began with the Trump regime declaring war on immigrants... and American citizens who looked like immigrants because they were brown.
Border Patrol, ICE, and other feds have been going to where they think immigrants are living and working, and arresting or pulling over anyone they think looks undocumented. This is not idle speculation.
The Trump regime has argued in court - and the Supreme Court agreed - that they should be able to stop someone based on whether they seem like they're undocumented, including their race.
This has become known as the Kavanaugh stop. It flips the script on the way we think law enforcement works - that you have a crime, and you have someone who you think committed the crime, and then you go after them.
The war at home began in June in Los Angeles, California, when the national guard was illegally deployed by Trump who ignored Gov. Newsome's opposition to the move. To make matters worse Trump also sent active-duty members of the military to back up ICE's illegal tactics against residents of Los Angeles.
Like a cancer, the armed deployment of active military, national guard and ICE agents spread to Washington D.C.; Portland, Oregon; Memphis, Tennessee; and Chicago, Illinois, and Charlotte, North Carolina. For the record the cities that were targeted had Democratic leaders.
As of December 2025, major federalized National Guard deployments have faced significant legal roadblocks, with the Supreme Court blocking efforts in Chicago and Portland. Federal judges in those states have also ruled against the Trump regimes defiant misuse of laws and violations of constitutional rights.
At this time, it's difficult to determine how many legal American citizens have been unjustly arrested by ICE. Pro Publica has documented 170 illegally arrested American citizens but with no government agency tracking the data it's impossible to determine the exact number of egregious arrests made this year.
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They've been held outside in the rain with only their underwear on. Pregnant women that were American citizens have been detained.
Videos of American citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds throughout the year. What's sad is the prospects for any significant reckoning over agent's conduct, even against citizens, are dim. The paths for suing federal agents are even more limited than they are for local police.
As the Trump regime continues its crusade against immigrants one thing stands out for sure: rather than focusing on convicted criminals, as Trump claims, an ever-larger share of those arrests were for solely immigration violations.
This fall, the share of immigrants with criminal convictions decreased just before the government shutdown, with only 3% of those arrested having criminal convictions.
As it Stands, coming up is the 5th and last part of this series where I examine the possibilities of war with Venezuela and Trump's emoluments violations that have set a new example for presidential grifting.
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