Casty’ s husband’ s deportation upsets the couple’ s son and daughter.“ They’ re kids,” she says.“ They shouldn’ t have to worry about what you’ re going through." what country you’ re from, how you enter, and who processes your case first, you could have wildly disparate outcomes.”
The Trump administration has ramped up enforcement while dismantling the systems to process and settle immigrants under an unprecedented 500-plus executive actions. It has cut funding to resettlement agencies, executed a record number of denaturalizations and deportations— without due process, critics say— deported immigrants to countries to which they have no connection, suspended visa processing from seventy-five countries, enacted a travel ban from thirty-nine countries, and challenged the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.
From January 2025 to March 10, 2026, ICE made nearly 700 arrests in Rhode Island, according to data assembled by the Deportation Data Project. ICE reports its agents arrested 13,517 people and removed 13,599 in New England from January 2025 to May 2026. High-profile actions, such as Operation Metro Surge, an enforcement blitz in Minneapolis that resulted in ICE agents killing two American citizens, have sent a current of fear and anger coursing through the state, splitting families and communities, and straining agencies that assist immigrants.
“ These attacks are not new but it’ s definitely worse,” says Catarina Lorenzo of Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance.“ They aren’ t really hiding their violence and they are not following the law— picking up people without a warrant or people whose cases haven’ t been decided yet.”
An ICE spokesman said that its officers operate within the law, and that nearly 70 percent of those arrested were“ criminal illegal aliens. Many of the individuals that are counted as‘ noncriminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’ t have a rap sheet in the U. S.”
Many in the state have risen to defend immigrants, challenging federal authority in courtrooms, conference rooms, council chambers and churches.
“ We recognize that immigrants are full people— our neighbors, business owners and essential workers,” says Economic Progress Institute Analyst Hector Perez-Aponte.“ We need to be careful about how we frame them, not based just on their citizenship status, but as Rhode Islanders.”
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