Bodies are stacking up in Trump’s deportation deluge. It’s going to get worse
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Like a teenager armed with their first smartphone, President Trump’s masked immigration enforcers love nothing more than to mug for friendly cameras.
They gladly invite pseudo-filmmakers — some federal government workers, others conservative influencers or pro-Trump reporters — to embed during raids so they can capture every tamale lady agents slam onto the sidewalk, every protester they pelt with pepper balls, every tear gas canister used to clear away pesky activists. From that mayhem come slickly produced videos that buttress the Trump administration’s claim that everyone involved in the push to boot illegal immigrants from the U.S. is a hero worthy of cinematic love.
But not everything that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and its sister agencies do shows up in their approved rivers of reels.
Their propagandists aren’t highlighting the story of Jaime Alanís García, a Mexican farmworker who fell 30 feet to his death in Camarillo this summer while trying to escape one of the largest immigration raids in Southern California in decades.
Jaime Alanís Garcia, 56, was fatally injured when he climbed atop a greenhouse and fell 30 feet while fleeing immigration agents at Glass House, his family said.
They’re not making videos about 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe, an Orange County resident who moved to this country from Mexico as a 4-year-old and died in a Victorville hospital in September after spending weeks in ICE custody complaining about his health.
They’re not addressing how ICE raids led to the deaths of Josué Castro Rivera and Carlos Roberto Montoya, Central American nationals run over and killed by highway traffic in Virginia and Monrovia while fleeing in terror. Or what happened to Silverio Villegas González, shot dead in his car as he tried to speed away from two ICE agents in suburban Chicago.
Those men are just some of the 20-plus people who have died in 2025 while caught up in ICE’s machine — the deadliest year for the agency in two decades, according to NPR.
Publicly, the Department of Homeland Security has described those incidents as “tragic” while assigning blame to everything but itself. For instance, a Homeland Security official told the Associated Press that Castro Rivera’s death was “a direct result of every politician, activist and reporter who continue to spread propaganda and misinformation about ICE’s mission and ways to avoid detention” — whatever the hell that means.
An ICE spokesperson asked for more time to respond to my request for comment, said “Thank you Sir” when I extended my deadline, then never got back to me. Whatever the response would’ve been, Trump’s deportation Leviathan looks like it’s about to get deadlier.
As reported by my colleagues Andrea Castillo and Rachel Uranga, his administration plans to get rid of more than half of ICE’s field office directors due to grumblings from the White House that the deportations that have swamped large swaths of the United States all year haven’t happened faster and in larger numbers.
Asked for comment, Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, described The Times’ questions as “sensationalism” and added “only the media would describe standard agency personnel changes as a ‘massive shakeup.’”
Agents are becoming more brazen as more of them get hired thanks to billions of dollars in new funds. Near Oakland, one fired a chemical round into the face of a Christian pastor from just feet away. In Santa Ana, another pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at activists who had been trailing him from a distance in their car. In the Chicago area, a woman claimed a group of them fired pepper balls at her car even though her two young children were inside.
La migra knows they can act with impunity because they have the full-throated backing of the White House. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller crowed on Fox News recently, “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.”
That’s not actually true, but when have facts mattered to this presidency if it gets in the way of its apocalyptic goals?
Tasked with turning up the terror dial to 11 is Gregory Bovino, a longtime Border Patrol sector chief based out of El Centro, Calif., who started the year with a raid in Kern County so egregious that a federal judge slammed it as agents “walk[ing] up to people with brown skin and say[ing], ‘Give me your papers.’” A federal judge ordered him to check in with her every day for the foreseeable future after the Border Patrol tear-gassed a neighborhood in a Chicago suburb that was about to host its annual Halloween children’s parade (an appeals court has temporarily blocked the move).
Bovino now reports directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and is expected to pick most of the ICE field office directors from Customs and Border Protection, the arm of the federal government that the Border Patrol belongs to. It logged 180 immigrant deaths under its purview for the 2023 fiscal year, the last year for which stats are publicly available and the third straight year that the number had increased.
To put someone like Bovino in charge of executing Trump’s deportation plans is like gifting a gas refinery to an arsonist.
He’s constantly trying to channel the conquering ethos of the Wild West, complete with a strutting posse of agents — some with cowboy hats — following him everywhere, white horses trailed by American flags for photo ops and constant shout-outs to “Ma and Pa America” when speaking to the media. When asked by a CBS News reporter recently when his self-titled “Mean Green Machine” would end its Chicago campaign — one that has seen armed troops march through downtown and man boats on the Chicago River like they were patrolling Baghdad — Bovino replied, “When all the illegal aliens [self-deport] and/or we arrest ‘em all.”
It turns out that if you send in phalanxes of largely masked federal agents to bully and intimidate people in American cities, Americans tend not to take kindly to it. Who knew?
Such scorched-earth jibber-jabber underlines a deportation policy under which the possibility of death for those it pursues is baked into its foundation. ICE plans to hire dozens of healthcare workers — doctors, nurses, psychiatrists — in anticipation of Trump’s plans to build more detention camps, many slated for inhospitable locations like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz camp in the Florida Everglades. That was announced to the world on social media with an artificial-intelligence-generated image of grinning alligators wearing MAGA caps — as if the White House was salivating at the prospect of desperate people trying to escape only to find certain carnage.
In his CBS News interview, Bovino described the force his team has used in Chicago — where someone was shot and killed, a pastor got hit with pepper balls from high above and the sound of windshields broken by immigration agents looking to snatch someone from their cars is now part of the Windy City’s soundtrack — as “exemplary.” The Border Patrol’s peewee Patton added he felt his guys used “the least amount of force necessary to accomplish the mission. If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them.”
One shudders to think what Bovino thinks is excessive for la migra. With his powers now radically expanded, we’re about to find out.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agencies are using carefully curated videos and media appearances to present a sanitized version of their operations while concealing the human cost of aggressive deportation efforts.
A documented surge in deaths has accompanied intensified Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operations, with more than 20 individuals dying in 2025 during ICE interactions, marking the deadliest year for the agency in two decades.
Federal immigration agents are operating with a sense of impunity, becoming increasingly brazen in their tactics because they have explicit backing from the White House, as evidenced by statements from administration officials about federal immunity protections.
The appointment of Gregory Bovino to an expanded leadership role overseeing ICE field office directors represents a dangerous escalation, particularly given a federal judge’s previous criticism of his operations as racial profiling and his unit’s documented involvement in deaths while in custody.
The structural design of the current deportation policy inherently accepts a high risk of fatalities as an acceptable consequence, exemplified by plans to hire healthcare workers and construct detention facilities in dangerous locations, suggesting the administration anticipates deaths will occur.
The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to deflect responsibility for deaths by blaming media coverage and activism rather than acknowledging systemic issues within enforcement operations.
Different views on the topic
Immigration enforcement and the establishment of borders represent legitimate federal policy responsibilities that require effective implementation, and arguments supporting enforcement measures deserve consideration alongside narratives focused on enforcement concerns[1].
Department of Homeland Security officials have characterized reported incidents as isolated tragedies while describing concerns raised by media outlets as “sensationalism” and reframing operational changes as routine personnel adjustments rather than significant policy shifts.
Federal immigration officials have stated that the force used by agents represents appropriate and measured responses calibrated to accomplish enforcement objectives, with assertions that casualties resulting from enforcement actions reflect decisions made by those attempting to evade authorities rather than excessive agency conduct.
The administration maintains that expanded immigration enforcement with increased funding and personnel represents a necessary response to address what officials characterize as violations of immigration law.
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