Since taking office this year, President Trump and his administration have been unapologetically loud and harmful about immigration. 

They’re separating families, raiding schools and churches, and taking people away, including children, U.S. citizens, and green card holders. Entire communities are living in fear of being torn apart, and important industries and businesses are starting to suffer.

And they’re using the U.S. military - just as loud and harmful - to help do all of it. 

Rather than working on reform to solve the barriers, backlogs, and bottlenecks plaguing our immigration system, the administration is pushing for an unprecedented rise in punitive and increasingly militant enforcement that is terrorizing communities across the nation. The goal is to push out the tens of thousands of migrants (and talks of millions) who call this country their home - despite most not having criminal records. 

For the past five months, the Trump administration's use of the U.S. military to enforce harmful immigration has proven to be both immoral and expensive. Here are five ways the Trump administration is militarizing our immigration system:

1. Designating military zones and empowering troops to act as law enforcement

In April 2025, Trump gave the Pentagon jurisdiction over federal lands along 200 miles of the southern border, effectively creating a military zone. This is a significant portion of the border - spanning California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas - encompassing approximately 110,000 acres (equivalent to around 83,000 football fields) of new barriers to entry and surveillance. The latest military zone gives the military authority to detain migrants until they are taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or police.

U.S. law has borrowed from centuries of legal tradition that sought to limit the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. Those laws and traditions have served as an important safeguard against authoritarianism - and by using the military for civilian law enforcement at the border, the Trump administration is tearing them down. 

Since returning to office, Trump has also sent thousands of troops to the border to assist CBP operations with the help of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. And they’re not stopping here: they’re trying to expand this effort with a second militarized area along the U.S.-Mexico border.

2. Turning the military, immigration enforcement, and local and state law enforcement into one big deportation machine

The Trump administration is taking over three branches of militarism -  the Pentagon, border enforcement agencies ICE and CBP, and law enforcement - to detain migrants.

In Florida alone, the Florida Highway Patrol can pull over vehicles, ask people about their immigration status, detain them, and ultimately pass them over to ICE. The Florida State Guard, Department of Agriculture, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are also all working with ICE - made possible by sneaky agreements that deputize law enforcement as immigration enforcement, known as 287(g) agreements. 

These agreements are expanding at an alarming rate and in safe spaces like schools. As of June 25, 2025, ICE has signed 719 agreements across 40 states, a 400% increase in just five months. Around 15 college and university police departments have signed 287(g) agreements in Florida alone. The American Immigration Council found that these agreements have resulted in the racial profiling of Latinos, threats to community safety, high costs for localities, arrests of individuals with little criminal histories, and ineffective coordination with ICE.

The recently passed Republican reconciliation bill also includes an additional $1 billion for the military to help carry out mass deportations and detentions.

3. Repurposing military bases and other sites into detention centers

At Fort Bliss, Texas, a “tent city” is being built for detention, projected to hold 1,000 migrants and eventually up to 10,000. In Florida, construction is underway on “Alligator Alcatraz” - a detention camp at the Everglades that puts detainees at serious risk of disease and death from flooding, mosquitoes, and other hazards.

The conditions in these detention camps are inhumane and far from meeting any safety requirements or federal court standards regarding access to basic needs for migrants. Even the former commissioner of CBP says that military facilities are not built for detention projects. Ultimately, more of these militarized detention sites could continue to pop up in military bases across the nation, such as in Colorado and other parts of Florida.

Perhaps one of the most wicked moves of this administration, in line with sending migrants to “third countries,” is deporting over 500 migrants as of June to the notorious Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, with talks of detaining 30,000 people. This U.S. naval base, modeled after maximum security prisons, has a thirty-year history of housing political refugees and enemies of the U.S. government without adequate due process.

Using military bases for detention has proven to be resource-intensive. The U.S. spent $40 million just for the first two months of Guantanamo Bay, and each day runs a high average cost of $100,000 to hold a single migrant.

4. Using military aircraft to transport migrants to detention outside of the U.S.

Military aircraft such as Air Force jets are taking migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and are expensive. The estimated cost of transporting migrants via military jets is $4,675 per migrant - about five times the cost of a one-way commercial ticket from El Paso, Texas to Guatemala. As of May 2025, the Pentagon spent $21 million on deportation flights. 

Worse, migrants report being dehumanized, chained, and barely fed during these journeys.

5. Employing military weapons, equipment, and tactics to silence dissent and detain migrants

People are witnessing ICE militantly taking away their neighbors. In early February 2025, Alfonso Garcia Vega was arrested at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. ICE officials dressed like troops stormed into his neighborhood, equipped with armored vehicles and flash bang grenades. Garcia Vega’s son claims that ICE did not possess a warrant and that his dad was just trying to be with his family, even though ICE painted him as a dangerous person.

Fortunately, many community members across the U.S. have been banding together in defense of their migrant neighbors and loved ones. The people of Los Angeles were quick to unite in resistance to ICE raids, thanks to months of organizing by the Community Self Defense Coalition LA. In Pasadena, a crowd even peacefully drove ICE agents out of a hotel where they were lodging. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines to suppress protests of the Los Angeles ICE raids is a crystal clear example of this administration integrating the military into its mass deportation agenda.

The military shouldn’t have anything to do with immigration. Its role in Trump’s mass deportations isn’t making us safer - they are enabling fear and increasing the threat of violence to our communities. Let’s remember: America can’t afford mass deportations, and immigration is a good thing, which 79% of Americans agree with in this recent Gallup poll. Moreover, polls show that Americans disapprove of Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles and that a majority disapprove of his “handling of deportations.”

Imagine what we could do with these resources that would be life-changing for our families, friends, and neighbors. $134 million is the estimated cost of deploying troops to Los Angeles to suppress ICE protests in LA. That’s enough to fund 716,578 people receiving SNAP benefits to combat hunger. The Republican budget bill that just passed reverses this lifeline program and will take food from hungry Americans.

It couldn’t be any clearer: we need to defund the separation of families and invest beyond the enforcement paradigm into the well-being of all of our communities.