Public and Judicial Pushback Against President’s Extreme Immigration Policies

Maribel Hastings

Posted February 12, 2026

Recent positive news offers much-needed hope amid ongoing uncertainty and fear around immigration. Yet, Donald Trump will remain in office for three more years, and unless circumstances dramatically change, his approach to immigration will likely remain cruel.

There are glimmers of light in this dark tunnel. Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy whose picture made international news, was released from a Texas detention center with his father, Adrián Conejo Arias. They were wrongly arrested in Minneapolis on January 20 while returning from school.

Both are asylum seekers with pending applications, yet they were detained. Federal Judge Fred Briery in Texas said their detention “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

In the fight between decency and cruelty, both public and judicial pressure are crucial forces for change against Trump’s immigration excesses.

Another federal district judge for the District of Columbia, Ana C. Reyes, stayed the Trump administration’s cancellation of TPS for 350,000 Haitians while lawsuits filed by those affected continue to proceed. There are fears that Trump’s detention and deportation machine will target cities with high concentrations of Haitians, such as Springfield, Ohio, especially if they lose protection from deportation by having their TPS revoked.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump falsely claimed that Haitians were killing and eating Springfield residents’ pets and JD Vance, then an Ohio senator and vice presidential candidate, repeated this claim, even after his team confirmed it was false.

At the Grammy Awards, several musicians, led by Puerto Rican Grammy-winner Bad Bunny, spoke out against ICE violence. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, Bad Bunny’s real name, urged people not to let hatred consume them and called for a protest rooted in love, not hate.

Some people will say that this is not important, but it is another element of public pressure that strengthens what protesters in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other places across the country are already doing by helping their immigrant neighbors and condemning the abuse of power by federal immigration authorities that has already claimed the lives of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti and the dozens of immigrants have also died in ICE custody in detention centers where there are reports of abuse, mistreatment, lack of medical care, and unhealthy conditions.

Criticism of Trump’s tactics are now coming from varied and influential sectors, such as prominent entertainers speaking out at award shows, leading sports figures making public statements, and top technology CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook, who directly addressed recent events in a company-wide memo.

The AP reported that Cook emailed staff expressing dissatisfaction with events in Minneapolis.

“I believe America is strongest when we live up to our highest ideals, when we treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter who they are or where they’re from, and when we embrace our shared humanity,” Cook said.

In other words, criticism now comes not just from immigrants, their neighbors, or supporters. The circle has widened, as opinion polls reflect declining support for Trump’s administration overall and his immigration policies specifically. Support for ICE’s performance is also lacking.

While Republicans still support Trump’s immigration policies, this support has eroded—especially after Pretti was shot and killed by a CBP agent.

This pressure could bring change—not as quickly or broadly as needed, but change nonetheless.

For example, on February 2, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that DHS agents in Minneapolis will wear body cameras, a change Democrats demand to release the multi-billion-dollar ICE budget in the latest legislative fight. And the border czar, Tom Homan, announced that 700 ICE and CBP agents will leave Minneapolis, reducing the total from 3,000 to 2,300.

However, we do not want to ignore the reality on the ground, and we know that despite unfavorable polls, protests, deaths, and cosmetic changes to his strategy, Trump will not change his anti-immigrant stance because it is part of his very essence.

And his advisor, Stephen Miller, the architect of his most extreme and cruel immigration policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents during Trump’s first term, will keep hatching plans because persecution of immigrants is his life’s mission.

In the fight between decency and cruelty, both public and judicial pressure are crucial forces for change against Trump’s immigration excesses.

Maribel Hastings is a Senior Advisor to América’s Voice.