Looking around it appears that the Trump administration intends to make an example of Los Angeles. If we really were living in an analog of the Roman Empire then we could expect all kinds of fun. All the men would be put to the sword; the women and children would be led away into slavery to the sound of their lamentations and the ground would be sown with salt. Today the best we could hope for would be a perp walk for the Mayor of LA and the Governor of California. But that would be a start. But it appears that Trump is serious about confronting the sanctuary state on its home turf.
What that looks like is ICE lurking around Home Depot and scooping up the illegals looking for work. As expected, the NGO’s have deployed their permanent college students with bull horns and whistles and assigned street actors to riot. And we see all the usual theater. Masked weirdos throwing water bottles, Molotov cocktails, bricks or whatever comes to hand. But there has been a surprise. The feds are arresting the guys throwing bricks. Yesterday I read that the guy throwing fire bombs has been charged with attempted murder. Now that’s progress!
Following this the Mayor of LA decided to order a curfew. That’s huge. In a sense she’s declaring defeat. She blinked. Basically, she’s telling the shock troops to go home and wait for a better opportunity. That’s huge. Because Trump isn’t going home. ICE and the FBI are ferreting out the people who organized the violence. And they are still rounding up illegals. Now, without a doubt what has been done so far is a drop in the bucket. Half of LA is made up of illegal aliens and their children and grandchildren. But unless all of this is public relations it looks very much like Trump is going to make deporting illegal aliens his dominant play.
And he should because it’s extremely popular and it allows him to show his opponents as complicit with illegal immigration and on the side of the foreigners in the street burning cars and throwing firebombs at law enforcement doing their jobs.
As far as the scope of deportation, I’m not worried about how slow it currently is. Trump learns by doing and as he learns he will get better and more efficient. By the end of his four years, he’ll probably have it down to a science and there will probably be a bullet train shooting fifty thousand illegals down to Mexico City every day (and he’ll get the Mexicans to pay for it too).
So, looking at Trump’s current strategy, I think he’s making gains on multiple fronts. He hasn’t ended the Ukraine or the Gaza wars or gotten his “big beautiful bill” signed or annexed Greenland yet but he has gotten the military and the ICE personnel to begin the signature policy of the Trump administration; deporting the millions of illegals that Joe Biden inflicted on us. And energy prices are coming down and that drives down inflation.
Keep up the good work Mr. Trump.