The Growing Resistance to Mass Deportation

While many doubted that the mass deportation Trump espoused during his presidential campaign would materialize, it is clear that the administration is true to its word, utilizing every avenue to deport undocumented immigrants as quickly as possible. Some of these deportation efforts have been purposefully dehumanizing, like the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. Others have been illegal, like the removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. And all have resulted in familial, economic, and social repercussions that will linger for decades. Yet communities have refused to stand by idly. From large cities like Los Angeles to small, rural towns like O’Neill, Neb., communities have come together across lines of race, class, immigration status, and political affiliation to resist the cruelty and chaos of mass deportation. During the first Trump administration, I visited towns throughout the country that were hit by large-scale worksite raids—raids just like that which occurred in Ellabell, Ga., when 475 workers were taken from a Hyundai plant on Sept. 4, 2025. With a small team of public health students, a colleague and I spoke with residents from these small, predominantly white, rural towns.  Immigration raids, like all forms of deportation, are chaotic and destabilizing. But I didn’t just hear stories of catastrophe and collapse. I also heard stories of resistance, sacrifice, and courage—stories that, amid a clear attempt to paint Latino immigrants as violent job-stealers, reminded me of the determination, creativity, and drive of immigrant families.  The first site we visited was located in Morristown, Tenn., a small county of about 32,000 near where ICE raided a meatpacking plant in April 2018. My time there illustrated a few fundamental facts about deportation that, while obvious in hindsight, are easily missed in the public narrative of deportation.  First, immigration enforcement results in a great deal of hunger. This may be because a primary breadwinner is deported and their family can’t afford food, a remaining parent is too scared to leave their home, or, as we saw in Tennessee, children stop going to school and do not eat in the cafeteria.  Second, with few exceptions, immigration worksite raids happen during the day, while children and teens are at school. This means that teachers have to explain to their students that the parent who dropped them off may not be the one who picks them up, a situation we are seeing more of in 2025. In Morristown, teachers were so angered about the swath of absences, described in detail by New Yorker journalist Jonathan Blitzer, that they developed their own meal delivery system, taking sack lunches directly to the homes of absent students.  Among the ironies of immigration enforcement is that after immigrants are detained, many are released to await their deportation cases. This results in a Catch-22: though they are unable to drive legally, the federal government asks them to show up to a range of locations to do things like check in with ICE, complete paperwork, provide signatures and thumbprints, or finalize doctors’ approval forms. In rural states, the locations one needs to visit can be over an hour away, across the county or even state lines.  In June 2018, ICE raided a plant nursery and a meat processing plant in two Ohio cities: Sandusky and Salem. Two-hundred-and-sixty workers were detained. Almost immediately, organizers constructed a rideshare system, largely staffed by retirees with the precise combination of what was needed in that moment: an open calendar for eight-hour drives, a driver’s license, and the white skin that would prevent racial profiling by Border Patrol.  Over time, white, rural residents worked alongside their Latino immigrant neighbors. For example, just hours after a raid, churches would open their doors so parishioners too terrified to go home could sleep in the pews. In one church I visited in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, an extra room went from a food pantry to a language lab, where those who came to the church could use the computers to learn English.  Many of these churches became beacons to which volunteers flocked, and it wasn’t long before lawyers left their big cities and drove hours to these churches, camped out for the weekend, and worked into the night to make sure everyone knew where their detained loved ones were, and that each had legal representation. When community members came with unrelated immigration issues, the lawyers helped. Resistance strategies began as a matter of survival, but the systems grew, evolved, and even came to foster goodwill across lines of race, class, and, in many cases, political affiliation.  The demographics of O’Neill, with a population of about 3,500, only 500 of whom are Latino, resemble those of so many other small towns that dot the interior of the United States and also experience targeted deportation efforts. These smaller communities, with fewer immigrants and fewer people who know immigrants, often lack the people power to mobilize the large protests we’ve seen in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and Dallas.  And while democratically led cities like New York have elected officials willing to be arrested if they are not allowed to investigate ICE holding cells, rural towns in red districts are more likely to have sheriffs who enthusiastically agree to work with ICE. Majority white towns often lack the cultural groups of large cities, too, like mariachi bands, who have creatively serenaded the hotel rooms of ICE agents who planned to arrest their families the next morning. Mass deportation efforts are growing. But so are efforts to resist it and to keep families and communities healthy, happy, and whole.