President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan he promised during the campaign has not yet taken hold — but you wouldn’t know that from the White House PR campaign.
Blitzing the Media Landscape
The administration has blitzed the airwaves and social media feeds with announcements of enforcement actions by Immigration and Customs and Enforcement. White House social media accounts post photos of shackled migrants being loaded onto military aircraft. Raids have been unusually public — with even “Dr. Phil” allowed to film an operation in Chicago.
And yet, the number of daily Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests, trumpeted each day on X, are still about where they were at times under President Barack Obama. Many of those detained have no violent criminal history and thousands have been quietly released for lack of detention capacity. Drugs and illegal immigrants are still slipping across the border each day.
It’s hardly “the largest deportation program in American history,” that Trump promised to launch on Day One of his administration.
Challenges and Risks
“Politically, I understand why they’re doing this,” said John Sandweg, acting director of ICE from 2013 to 2014. “But I think it sends messages that are inaccurate about what ICE has historically done — that this is new.”
The far-reaching media grab speaks to the challenges the Trump administration faces as it tries to move quickly to fulfill the mass deportations promise, an ambitious undertaking that will take funding, time and resources to scale up. And even if successful, the full effort faces political risk, given that Trump’s operation is not only targeting violent criminal offenders.
The PR Narrative
A White House official disputed the notion that Trump’s actions are mere window dressing, pointing to the president’s tariff deals, the national emergency declaration, the use of the military to secure the border and his roll back of Biden era policies — all moves that drastically altered the nation’s treatment of immigrants.
“President Trump campaigned on an unequivocal pledge to end the invasion of migrants and drugs at our borders — a promise he began following up on with one bold action after another within hours of assuming office,” said White House spokesperson Kush Desai.
Misleading Statistics and Messaging
Deportations, after dipping in the first years of the Biden administration, jumped to a 10-year high in 2024. Trump has touted his higher arrest numbers, but reports show that some of those arrested have already been released back into their communities — one example of the restraints the president faces in rapidly scaling up his deportation machine.
But when it comes to Trump’s vow to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the White House’s amplification of the immigration enforcement and deportation efforts serve other purposes, too.
Policy Implications and Public Perception
Democrats say they are familiar with Trump’s salesmanship from the campaign trail — where they were outspent 5-1 on immigration ads — and are worried it will work again.
“These people never stop campaigning, and Trump and his team — Iook, they’re much savvier, they’re hungrier and unrelenting,” said Beatriz Lopez, co-executive director of Immigration Hub, a pro-immigrant group that launched during Trump’s first administration.
Conclusion
Trump’s PR campaign around immigration enforcement highlights the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality. As the administration faces challenges in fulfilling mass deportation promises, the political risks and messaging strategies come into sharp focus.