To the families sent fleeing from MacArthur Park on Monday in California, President Trump’s latest ICE raid must have seemed like an invasion. The massive operation involved nine federal agencies, the National Guard, local police and more than a dozen armored military vehicles. It was the kind of shock-and-awe campaign more at home in Fallujah than in a quiet Los Angeles park.
The agencies involved sure seemed to think the raid on MacArthur Park was a military campaign. Photos from the scene show federal agents dressed in camouflage combat gear pouring out of armored trucks as stunned civilians look on in disbelief. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement even gave the raid a puffy, military-sounding name: “Operation Excalibur.”
Trump’s draconian immigration crackdowns may play well with his MAGA base, but they’re alienating nearly everyone else — including the mainstream conservatives Republicans will depend on to protect their fragile congressional majorities next year.
The unnerving images from MacArthur Park arrive at a crucial moment for the American public. A growing number of people — including Republican voters — are noticing that while Trump’s immigration raids have swelled in size, aggression and taxpayer cost, they haven’t generated many actual deportations. Meanwhile, they recoil at the regular drumbeat of news stories showcasing masked ICE agents urinating in school parking lots or illegally detaining U.S. citizens.
Prior to May, most Americans viewed ICE positively. Now the agency evokes images of masked men huddled around blacked-out vans and Alligator Alcatraz. Agents’ refusal to identify themselves, and MAGA’s celebration of their unaccountability, has led millions of Americans to see the agency as little more than Trump’s personal skullcrushers. Now, 54 percent of adults say ICE’s actions have gone too far.
People also know exactly who to blame for letting ICE run wild. Six recent polls show a collapse in public support for Trump’s immigration policies, leaving the GOP 3 points underwater with voters on an issue they’ve dominated for years. In fact, it’s been nearly 20 years since Republicans’ immigration policies were this unpopular with voters — a dip Democrats exploited to reclaim both houses of Congress in 2006. Trump’s stumbles are setting the stage for history to repeat itself next year.
Like any free people, Americans from across the political spectrum are feeling a visceral response to Trump’s police state tactics. That’s true even of long-time Republican allies like the nation’s conservative Catholic bishops, who realized too late that Trump’s pledge to only deport “murderers and rapists” had been a lie.
“A very large number of Catholic bishops, and religious leaders in general, are outraged by the steps which the administration is taking to expel mostly hardworking, good people from the United States,” Robert Cardinal McElroy told The New York Times on June 29. “The realities are becoming more ominous.”
Other conservatives are raising the alarm about the large number of innocent bystanders swept up by immigration raids. The R Street Institute’s Steven Greenhut called the inaccuracy of ICE arrests “deeply troubling to anyone who cares about constitutional government” in an Orange County Register op-ed.
Greenhut is right: In its current, MAGA-fied form, ICE is an acute threat to American civil liberties. Republicans worsened that threat by an order of magnitude when they decided, inexplicably, to shower the agency with $75 billion as part of Trump’s “one big beautiful bill.” As conservative pundit Charlie Kirk boasted on July 3, that money was enough to turn ICE into “a standing army” that was “court proof.”
ICE is now the best-funded law enforcement agency in the nation, boasting a budget on par with the entire Canadian military. Millions of Americans have watched ICE grow into an unaccountable entity that sees no problem deploying military-grade hardware to raid a childrens’ summer camp. People are coming to the conclusion that the ends do not justify such brutal means.
This was not the immigration reform these voters were promised when Trump pledged to focus his efforts on hardened criminals and gangsters. Instead, they watch as military vehicles and soldiers become a regular presence on the streets of major American cities. They look at the gang of masked ICE agents and feel less safe than they did before the troops arrived. And they keep telling pollsters they will not make this mistake again.
Those voters who feel betrayed by Trump’s immigration lies should trust the immune response they are feeling. What we saw in MacArthur Park on Monday was not and must never become normal. Now, more than ever, the American people must turn their consciences into political activism and demand ICE be brought under control. If Republicans won’t listen, they will hear voters’ anger loud and clear at the ballot box in 2026.
Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.
