President Donald Trump has doubled down on his bid to prioritize deportations in Democrat-led cities that happened to protest against him over the weekend, insisting they were filled with illegal immigrants being used to rig elections.
At his first appearance at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Canada, the president reiterated his latest directive for ICE immigration raids to focus on “blue cities” such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, claiming that they were part of a Democrat power grab.
“I want them to focus on the cities, because the cities are where you really have what you call ‘sanctuary cities’, and that’s where the people are,” he told reporters ahead of a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
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“Most of those people are in the cities—all blue cities, all Democrat run cities—and they think they’re going to use them to vote. Not going to happen” he added.
The comments were not the first time Trump has claimed without evidence that illegal immigrants were pouring into the country to help Democrats cheat in elections.
But his latest push to expand ICE raids in non-Republican states come two days after millions of people gathered in cities across America for the “No Kings” protests on Saturday, where overall crowd sizes dwarfed the audience for Trump’s birthday military parade in Washington.
Cabinet ministers have also fallen into line with Trump’s latest deportation directive.
In a post on X, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that department would withhold funding from cities where anti-ICE demonstrations were allowed to take place.
“The @USDOT will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement,” Duffy wrote. “And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don’t expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding.”
The immigration crackdown in Democrat cities takes place as the administration shifts away from farms, restaurants and hotels amid concerns that it could hurt key industries because employees would stop showing up to work out of fear.
Trump and top White House aide Stephen Miller had initially set a hugely ambitious target to deport one million illegal immigrants within the first year office—more than double the amount that Barack Obama removed during his administration.
Asked on Monday if the target remained, in view of reports that ICE officials had so far struggled to meet the kind of numbers Trump wanted, the White House declined to say.
Instead, it pointed the Daily Beast to a Truth Social post the president issued on Sunday night ordering law enforcement agencies to expand their efforts.
Meanwhile, new research by the American Immigration Council has highlighted the impact immigrants are having in fueling the US economy across the very cities Trump is now targeting.
In metro Los Angeles, for example, which for the past week has been the epicenter of tensions over Trump’s deportation plan, 4.2 million immigrants paid $56.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2023.
At least two in five nurses and half of all health aides are immigrants, along with more than half of the city’s construction workforce.
And about 425,400 immigrant entrepreneurs are in metro L.A, generating $13 billion in business income to the area.
“Immigrants are not a threat to our communities; they are the backbone of them,” said Nan Wu, the council’s director of research.
But Trump, however, disagreed. Standing next to Carney at the G7 on Monday, he hit blamed Biden for allowing millions of people to enter the U.S. illegally and making the country less safe.
