Clara Ann Bagnoli ʼ28
Design Editor
In June, Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in immigration raids. Since then, President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have declared crime emergencies in major cities across the country and deployed additional troops to these areas. Students from these areas are feeling the effects of the deployment in their home cities and watching as ICE targets neighboring cities to the Claremont Colleges, prompting concerns about federal funding being used to intensify anti-immigrant violence.
Since June, Trump has sent 2,500 troops to Washington D.C., 500 to Chicago, and 400 to Portland, Oregon. However, deployments to Chicago and Portland are currently being contested in federal courts for alleged infringement of the 10th and 14th Amendments, which protect state rights, due process, and equal protection for citizens.
Unlike past deployments that used each state’s National Guard, Trump is using troops volunteered by southern Republican states to attack crime in Democratic-led cities. Because Washington, D.C. lacks statehood status, its National Guard is under federal control, taking orders directly from the president.
Harold Fusonn PZ ʼ26 is worried that Washington, D.C.’s mayor is conceding to Trump for her own political interests. “I think her desire to [bring a football stadium to the city] is leading her to give in to some of his policies,” Fusonn said.
Although Trump alleges these cities need to crack down on crime, in reality, their crime rates are declining. Instead, Trump’s actions have been criminalizing undocumented immigrants residing in these cities by conflating them with violent crime.
Additionally, a Supreme Court order that temporarily lifts the ban on racial profiling as a legitimate factor in whether or not a person should be detained or questioned has led to many U.S. citizens being illegally detained as well.
Santa Monica resident Valerie Ward ’28 feels the increase in raids will especially hurt Southern Californians. “There are so many Spanish-speaking people in L.A., and Hispanic people make up a huge part of [the population],” she said. “I think it’s horrible, it’s racial profiling and it’s making people afraid to carry about their everyday lives,” Ward said.
Over a third of Southern California are immigrants, most from Latin American countries and about nine percent of L.A. County’s population lacks legal status.
Ward lives on a street with multiple Mexican-owned restaurants and carwashes. In the past few months, business has been slow or places have had to close their doors from fear of raids on their workers and customers.
“The last time I went home, ICE had done a raid on my street,” Ward said. “[ICE] had taken two people from the car wash… and then a lot of other business owners came over to check out the situation and sent their people home for the day.”
ICE raids have also directly affected students at the Claremont Colleges. In June, Job Garcia, a Claremont Graduate University student, was unlawfully detained by ICE at a Home Depot in Los Angeles, despite being a U.S. citizen. An ICE agent tackled and arrested Garcia while he was filming ICE officers conducting arrests.
ICE has also raided areas surrounding the Claremont Colleges. Recently, ICE shot Carlos Jimenez, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, in Ontario while he was attempting to inform a group of children about ICE agents nearby. In the city of Pomona, three laborers were detained during a raid on Sept. 25 at the Pomona Day Laborer Center.
Since ICE does not technically need warrants to make arrests in public places, they often raid public schools, grocery stores, and places of employment or worship. Within the past six months, ICE has detained almost 60,000 people, the majority of whom did not have criminal records.
Portland native Lily Frasier ‘28 argued that a better use of federal funds would be to support social services, specifically the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food assistance to 18% of Oregonians. The current federal government shutdown has paused SNAP.
“That’s terrifying to me,” Frasier said. “We need to be feeding people. I feel like that’s a very basic thing.”
Fusonn similarly expressed, “There [are] ways to be spending that money that [could] go into supporting unhoused people in the city, or other ways to support the city.”
The expenses created by Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in L.A. are costing American taxpayers $120 million.
“That is a ridiculous misuse of resources,” Frasier said. “I don’t think that the National Guard, or much law enforcement presence, is necessary at the scene of the protests [outside of Portland ICE facilities].”
Protests against both the increase in ICE raids and the deployment of the national guard have been steadfast across the nation. Ward expressed how providing support was especially important for those privileged in their documentation status.
“For people who are not in immediate danger, taking a stand is important, because some people are rightfully afraid to be out as much,” Ward said.
In Portland, these protests have taken the form of organized naked bike rides and even wearing inflatable dinosaur costumes to counter the remarks Trump has made about the city as “war-ravaged.”
Frasier disagreed with Trump’s remarks. “I find it completely ridiculous [how they are] making these generalizations about Portland,” she said. “The way that people are going about [protesting] is making it very obvious that this protest is not an organized, military operation in the way the administration wants to make it seem. It’s been very clear … that it’s not just a protest, but it’s also kind of a community coming together.”
The protests have not only highlighted Portland’s sense of community, but disproportionate escalation by federal troops. While watching live streams of protests, Frasier noticed a sniper on top of the ICE building, while nobody on the ground was visibly armed.
As federal courts decide on the constitutionality of the National Guard deployments, students remain concerned about communities in their home cities and around Claremont. The increased militarization of cities and far-reaching ICE operations signal dangerous trends in the lengths the Trump administration will go to enforce its policies.
