ICE Thinks It Can Purge America of Immigrants, but Demographics Would Like a Word

Ruben Navarrette
Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:18:14 -0800
Opinion

SAN DIEGO — Is the siege of Minneapolis really drawing down now that there is a new sheriff in town?

You can't be serious. Personnel changes driven by public relations are usually symbolic and cosmetic, especially when the person setting the tone from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. seems as determined as ever to make America hate again.

President Donald Trump has made no secret of what he thinks of non-white immigrants. He has called them "vermin" and "garbage," insisting they come from "shit-hole countries" and wind up "poisoning the blood" of the United States.
Updated: Tue Feb 03, 2026

SAN DIEGO — Is the siege of Minneapolis really drawing down now that there is a new sheriff in town?

You can't be serious. Personnel changes driven by public relations are usually symbolic and cosmetic, especially when the person setting the tone from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. seems as determined as ever to make America hate again.

President Donald Trump has made no secret of what he thinks of non-white immigrants. He has called them "vermin" and "garbage," insisting they come from "shit-hole countries" and wind up "poisoning the blood" of the United States.

Besides, Trump and Co. have turned lying into an Olympic sport. If they say things in the City of Lakes are getting better, things are probably getting worse.

In one of the most egregious whoppers, Border Patrol agents — who had arrested the father of Liam Conejo Ramos — claimed they did not use the five-year-old as "bait" to lure his mother out of her house in Columbia Heights, Minn. so they could nab her too. Photos suggested otherwise, and so did eyewitness testimony of Border Patrol agents forcing Ramos to ring the doorbell to his home and call out to his mother.

This week, Ramos and his father — who, along with Ramos' mother, are from Ecuador and in the middle of the asylum process — were released from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas. That's only because a federal judge ordered their release and because Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, applied pressure on U.S. immigration officials to obey the order.

Castro probably didn't set out to make fellow members of Congress — especially the other 42 members of the feckless Congressional Hispanic Caucus — look ineffective and irrelevant by comparison. Still, that's how it played out.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting to see how things play out with the new sheriff. Border Czar Tom Homan was sent to clean up the mess made by former Border Patrol commander-in-charge Greg Bovino, who told agents they could do whatever they wanted because Minneapolis was "our fucking city" — isn't the guy you call to defuse a bomb. He's the guy you call when you want something blown up.

At the moment, what Homan seems to want to blow up is the trust between the Minneapolis Police Department and the community it serves.

That trust was hard-earned. Public confidence in local law enforcement was shattered after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. City officials tried to fix that by hiring Brian O'Hara as their new police chief. O'Hara seems to have one of the most valuable things any cop can have: common sense. After two Border Patrol agents shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti, the chief appeared on CBS News' "Face the Nation." He described the situation in his city as "absolutely not sustainable" and declared that "people have had enough."

Sadly, Homan has not had enough. He has pledged to remain in Minneapolis until the problem is fixed. But what if Homan — and his whole approach to immigration enforcement, which is focused on migrants but ignores the U.S. employers who hire them — is the problem?

Spin is always a problem. The insistence that the immigration crackdown is about law and order was always destined to become a punchline given that the man pulling the strings from behind the curtain has 34 felony convictions.

Wake up, America. The ugly truth is the purge — which has focused on Latinos, Asians and Blacks — is about the same things that every other immigrant purge in U.S. history was about: race and culture.

A 2026 study by Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell researchers found that, for the first time, white births in the United States now account for fewer than half of total births. White people are responsible for 49.6% of all births, while births from the Latino, Asian and Black people comprise 50.4%.

For a lot of white Americans, those figures are frightening. And they hope that deportations can magically transport the United States back to the 1950's.

Sorry, folks. Lo siento. The culture war is over, and you lost. Demographics are more powerful than deportations.

ICE and Border Patrol can put on a big show about rounding up and removing people. But many of those folks are going to come back, either due to the fact that they lack options or because they're desperate to reunite their family, friends and community.

And for that, the United States — this fabled land of immigrants — should overcome the instinct to be hateful and try instead to just be grateful.