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Making sense of Trump’s immigration crackdown

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Two weeks ago, the latest crackdown on a U.S. “sanctuary city” led to tragedy, after a federal agent shot a protester to death in Minneapolis. We interview Karen Shragg, a Minnesota native and long-time overpopulation activist, on the current situation in the Twin Cities and where we go from here.

by The Overpopulation Project

Over the past year, Donald Trump’s second administration increased border security and decreased asylum and refugee admissions into the United States. Both moves have been broadly popular. More controversially, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) initiated a series of mass enforcement actions in Democratic cities, including Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. Tragically, this most recent action resulted in the shooting death of Renee Good, a mother of three.

Daily video posts from Minneapolis show chaotic scenes of protesters squaring off against ICE agents. Are these justified enforcement operations to reduce illegal immigration, or punishment for Democrat-led cities that voted against Donald Trump in 2024? Here to help readers make sense of what is happening is Dr. Karen Shragg, lifelong environmentalist, naturalist, educator and overpopulation activist.

Karen is a native of Minnesota and directed the Wood Lake Nature Center, in the Twin Cities metro area, for many years. She received her doctorate from the University of St. Thomas in 2002 and has written many books and articles, including Move Upstream, A Call to Solve Overpopulation. Karen tells us how things feel “on the ground” in Minneapolis/St. Paul. She and Phil Cafaro compare where they would like to see U.S. immigration policy move in the future, and discuss whether current events are moving America closer or further away from a just and sustainable immigration policy.

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27 responses to “Making sense of Trump’s immigration crackdown”

  1. clairecafaro Avatar
    clairecafaro

    KAREN for PRESIDENT! 

    Reply
    1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
      Philip Cafaro

      She’s got my vote!

      Reply
  2. Mike Hanauer Avatar
    Mike Hanauer

    Thank You. It is so refreshing to see a well considered and balanced conversation – and that also includes sustainability. There is no justice of any kind on a dying planet. Always needing more housing, more schools, more water, and less nature accomplishes only catastrophe.

    Perhaps the next similar conversation can bring out more of the importance of sustainability and all we lose by ignoring it, or giving it only lip service. Hopefully there is a way to gain it more eyeballs as well.

    I am now reading a new book, “Money, Lies and God – inside the movement to destroy American Democracy” by Katherine Stewart. It documents so well the power and money that is behind what is going on. Highly recommended.

    Reply
    1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
      Philip Cafaro

      Thanks Mike. Feel free to share the video with friends and colleagues; word of mouth is often the best way to get serious listeners.

      Reply
  3. winthrop staples Avatar
    winthrop staples

    Although I think Phil Cafaro made a good fair attempt a few times to move the discussion in the direction of how to do some kind of ‘acceptable’ enforcement of immigration law in the USA. This discussion and no news or commentary from the major or alternative media have informed the public about the unpleasant practical realities involved in law enforcement or military like searches for and the apprehension of criminals. Now I happen to have served as an officer in Infantry and Special Forces units and I am also an endangered species biologist who realizes the foundation problem of overpopulation. And, I just happen to have the knowledge gained from being told by a retired prison official in California about the incredible difficulty of identifying illegal immigrant foreigners once they destroy their real identification documents, and get fake ones, and or live under a few different assumed names in the USA for years.
    In other words if we are going to have any apprehension and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants at all it is going to be necessary to ask numerous persons for their ID in the vicinity of where ICE agents have received intelligence information indicating that one or more serious criminal aliens are working or residing. And when persons can not supply ID or theirs are obviously false or they as they (according to my friend) often do – simply refuse to identify themselves. Then it is necessary to take more people into custody than the criminals originally sought until they can be identified via DNA or facial recognition.
    And then what occurs is that many of those detained are found to have deportation orders on them or they have committed crimes in the USA. And so even though they are not the murderers or rapists or criminals originally targeted it is the law that they must be deported. Thus the horror stories about the alleged cruelty of the deportation of all manner of lesser criminals and people who are not murderers and rapists are very disingenuous. For how can law enforcement officials of any kind justify releasing known criminal types back into the population who have been arrested for assault or driving drunk knowing that there is a high probability that they will seriously injure or kill someone in the future?
    But what mystifies me is that if we assume almost all major cities (that are also sanctuary cities that have rich elites who apparently want slave wage labor) are acting in good faith then why don’t they want to quickly get rid of the serious criminals that ICE is searching for at least in their initial attempts to do something about the 10 to 20 million illegals that may be in the country? Would it not make sense for open borders advocates to want to ‘prove’ that open borders are workable and a good part of our globalist’s ideology of global economic integration? By having local police quickly call ICE when they arrest an illegal for a crime and having them removed so this small number of individuals don’t injure the lives and or reputations of the rest of their illegal immigrant communities? After all if criminals only comprise about 5% of the illegal immigrants then why is this small loss of what open borders advocates call “more bodies for economic growth” of such concern? Certainly this 5% could quickly be replaced from the almost infinite supply of foreigners that our globalists could invite in using some new imaginative contrived excuse?
    Or do our open borders advocates actually want the injury and suffering that this 5% can inflict on our society to occur? In order to create a multicultural anarchy of tribal warfare condition? And so a need and or desperate popular demand for a more central planning less free society? One that is more conducive being “run” by a relatively few billionaire oligarchs and their bought and paid for “permanent” or “deep state” government representatives and officials? A system like that of China’s “Red Nobility” that so many of our business leaders have said they admire in a number of essays in major publications over the years?

    Reply
    1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
      Philip Cafaro

      Thanks Win. The whole question of what “reasonable” immigration enforcement looks like is important, yet neglected. It’s clear that sanctuary cities like Minneapolis aren’t interested in fair and just enforcement — for better or worse, they are convinced that enforcing immigration laws against people who’s only crime is being in the country illegally, is itself unjust. Hence the local or state laws against cooperating with ICE.

      I see bad faith on both sides — along with a rush to demonize one another.

      Reply
    2. gaiabaracetti Avatar
      gaiabaracetti

      There’s lots of countries that have policies to limit illegal and even legal migration, that are identifying, arresting and deporting illegal immigrants or criminals, and not a single one of them has masked armed thugs shooting people in the streets with impunity or having migrants die in custody or arresting citizens. Maybe Americans should be a little more humble and try and have a look at how other countries are doing it.

      Reply
  4. gaiabaracetti Avatar
    gaiabaracetti

    Karen is 100% right. This isn’t worth losing your rights and freedoms over. Bargains with the devil always end with the devil winning and you not even getting what you wanted in the first place.
    These parties or leaders running on migration end up not actually limiting it, because, as she said, they aren’t serious about it, they need the fearmongering to keep winning elections, and they don’t want to upset their rich friends who definitely do want illegal immigrants to exploit.
    What you said, Philip, about the scare from right-wing parties winning elections over migration, prompting left-wing parties to take the issue more seriously, can only work if it hasn’t been polarised as much as in the US, and if you keep a democracy in which what people want still matters somewhat, as we have so far been able to do in Europe. But if you sign your country away to those thugs and the government that sent them to intimidate opponents and habituate the population to even more police violence… you’ll find yourself in a totalitarian state where what you want – for the environment or otherwise – doesn’t even matter anymore.
    Take it from an Italian, the US is going full fascist. Anything that you think you can still do, you might not be able to do anymore if you don’t stop this, and that includes fighting for the environment.

    Reply
    1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
      Philip Cafaro

      Gaia, you and I agree on the danger of Trump ushering in greater authoritarianism. But one way that happens is by convincing political moderates that the opposition party doesn’t support “law and order.”

      I think Democrats are making a BIG mistake in centering opposition to Trump around support for illegal immigrants. They are falling into an obvious trap set by the administration. This at a time when the Republicans are engaged in one of the biggest wealth transfers from poor and middle class citizens to rich ones in U.S. history (huge tax cuts for billionaires, huge health insurance increases for common citizens).

      Reply
      1. gaiabaracetti Avatar
        gaiabaracetti

        But are they really? It’s an honest question, I don’t know to what extent the opposition to ICE translates into support for illegal migration. After all, Obama and Biden were still expelling people…
        Mamdani, for one, won by campaigning on economic issues, I hope others get the message.

      2. Philip Cafaro Avatar
        Philip Cafaro

        Biden led the laxest immigration enforcement regime in US history, encouraged millions of people to file bogus asylum claims, and brought in several million more through supposedly “temporary” protections that everyone expected to be permanent. His administration turned an already permissive system into a joke, and doubled already excessive annual US immigration numbers. And that’s a big part of why Democrats lost to Trump in 2024 — again.

        After Biden, it was absolutely imperative that the federal government re-assert the idea of limits to immigration. That necessarily had to involve a crackdown on illegal immigration. No way around that. The alternative was to acquiesce to open borders. And I have no doubt that Democrats would have continued with the worst of Biden’s immigration follies under a President Harris.

        Trump’s administration has cracked down on illegal immigration in ways that are cruel, unnecessary, and counterproductive. Most Americans want immigration laws enforced fairly and humanely. That’s not what Trump is doing. There’s a better way, built around punishing EMPLOYERS of illegal immigrants who break the law to hire them.

  5. Claire Cafaro Avatar
    Claire Cafaro

    What exactly is the message?
    Immigration is a wedge issue which Donald Trump has used to muddy the problem of overpopulation.
    At times that has been pointed out on this blog, then illegal immigration seems to take over, to the detriment of every other consideration, including economic and environmental ones.
    I confess to having underestimated Mr. Trump’s uncanny ability to divide and conquer. His admirers love him for his authenticity while his detractors wonder how they remain loyal to someone who is making their lives worse.
    As the British economist Joan Robinson said: Ideology is like breath: you never smell your own.
    Karen Schragg emphasized consequences; can this be done without getting bogged down in the ideological quagmire of immigration, whether legal or illegal?

    Reply
    1. gaiabaracetti Avatar
      gaiabaracetti

      Canada as well as many European countries are (relatively) quietly restricting immigration without all this noise and without anything like ICE. Interestingly, it seems to be the ones run by leftist or centrist governments. There’s a few lessons there.

      Reply
    2. Claire Cafaro Avatar
      Claire Cafaro

      May I correct my comment to say Trump has politicized immigration to further his own agenda. The issue of overpopulation is lost and we become more polarized.

      Reply
      1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
        Philip Cafaro

        Everything Trump does is to further his own agenda; he’s a narcissist. That said, both sides seem to be “politicizing immigration”, using the issue to solidify their base and denying the other sides’ legitimate concerns. And neither side acknowledges overpopulation or the role population plays in causing environmental problems.

  6. gaiabaracetti Avatar
    gaiabaracetti

    Philip, you are assuming that Trump’s aim is really to crack down on migrants. I think it’s becoming more and more apparent that the purpose of ICE is to intimidate political opponents and habituate the population to increasing levels of state violence. And imprisonment. He, or whoever the decision maker is, probably also intends to make the country whiter, hence the racial profiling by ICE and the open invitations extended to white migrants from South Africa or other white majority countries (who know better than to come to the US now).
    I’m not one to cry “fascism” or “racism” any time something I don’t like happens, but that seems to be what’s going on here.
    I agree with the rest of what you say.

    Reply
  7. gaiabaracetti Avatar
    gaiabaracetti

    This is what needs to be addressed, or it will never end: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/24/remittances-african-workers-diaspora-black-tax
    And how do you address it? If you build a rich society, people will want to join in from somewhere else in the world. If you build a materially poor society, people will migrate out and others will come and exploit your resources. As long as there’s a greedy human anywhere in the world, no one is safe. It’s the history of humanity, well before capitalism and colonialism.

    Reply
    1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
      Philip Cafaro

      I don’t think developed nations need to solve all the world’s problems in order to implement the kind of reasonable immigration policies most of their citizens want. Yes, there are large disparities in wealth and opportunities between different countries and regions. No, mass immigration isn’t the best way to address that issue — if only because most citizens in developed nations don’t want more immigration. In a democracy, the people’s wishes are supposed to matter.

      We don’t say much about race in this blog. What role, if any, racial concerns should play in setting immigration policies is an interesting question. I would be interested in hearing people’s views on that.

      peaking very generally, I think my country made a big mistake when we failed to embrace “colorblindness” as a governing philosophy and instead hung onto racial classifications and attempted to micromanage racial numbers for certain jobs, school placements, funding mechanisms, etc. Not only has this often set up complicated mechanisms to achieve morally dubious goals. More worrisome, given identity politics, it was only a matter of time before ambitious politicians started running and winning on white grievances and even, in Trump’s case, building a winning coalition around white identity.

      This is not healthy for society! We should focus on furthering the common good, and particularly the wellbeing of our most vulnerable fellow citizens. To do that, though, we need to feel them as common citizens, not members of different tribes.

      Reply
      1. gaiabaracetti Avatar
        gaiabaracetti

        We could choose to be poorer, on average – i.e. consume less. Then, less people would come, provided we are able to protect our resources from exploitation.
        Identity politics is a mess, but it’s not a universal problem, it’s more a US / some former colonies problem.

  8. gaiabaracetti Avatar
    gaiabaracetti

    I petition to remove AI slop from the comments.

    Reply
    1. Philip Cafaro Avatar
      Philip Cafaro

      Good suggeston, duly noted!

      Reply
  9. Stable Genius Avatar
    Stable Genius

    Left or right, Canadians accepted non-violently, that the government had a right, to curtail immigration visas, according to the popular will. Nobody died.

    In America however, the left simply does not accept, that the government has any such right. Pretti and Good aren’t martyrs. They’re just self-important lefties who made really bad decisions.

    Reply
    1. gaiabaracetti Avatar
      gaiabaracetti

      So you believe that people should be executed by the state on the streets because they have ideas you don’t like. And that’s the only way we solve problems, by killing people who don’t agree with the proposed solution. Ok.

      Reply
      1. Stable Genius Avatar
        Stable Genius

        Yeah whatever, Gaia. It turns out, Pretti had done much the same thing, a week before he was shot. Let’s face it, he was a preening agitator.

        Trump has pulled back, because he is not stupid. My point remains, the American left does not accept, that the democratic majority has rights. This is something they ought to learn.

    2. David Polewka Avatar
      David Polewka

      And the rabble rousers started saying “RESIST” and kept repeating,
      right after Trump won vs. Harris. The youngsters have a lot of energy
      but not much sense yet, because their minds are not fully developed
      until age 25 or 30, so they go out and show their rear ends. There ain’t
      a whole lot of video on the 30+ thousands murdered in two days in Iran,
      so the Minneapolis thing gets blown out of proportion.

      Reply
  10. gaiabaracetti Avatar
    gaiabaracetti

    Italian media is now reporting that ICE agents will accompany US athletes to Italy for the winter Olympics. ICE is apparently already operating in dozens of other countries. Further proof that was never just about immigration to the US.

    Reply
  11. gaiabaracetti Avatar
    gaiabaracetti

    Stable Genius, so you ARE ok with people you don’t agree with being shot in the streets. Usually, when people are suspected of a crime, they are investigated and arrested, not shot and killed. I can’t believe that so many Americans need to be told this.
    And what about Iran? Do you want to become like that? Because if you accept police shooting protesters, that’s where you’re heading.

    Reply

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