{"id":16934,"date":"2026-01-22T21:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T21:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=16934"},"modified":"2026-01-22T21:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T21:28:12","slug":"heres-why-there-are-more-ice-raids-in-blue-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=16934","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s why there are more ICE raids in blue states"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Jarrett Stepman<\/span><\/span>, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, January 20, 2026<\/span>A protester with an anti-ICE sign stands outside of the Henry Bishop Whipple Federal building on January 18, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. <\/span> | Jim Vondruska\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

The Left\u00a0is desperate to make lawful deportation in America a giant, impossible mess to deal with.<\/p>\n

According to a new media narrative,\u00a0President Donald Trump\u00a0and the Department of Homeland Security are behaving irresponsibly by conducting more immigration raids around the country, which in turn have allegedly led to violence against innocent civilians and illegal aliens.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019ve been listening to Democrats, you\u2019d think that the reason that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is particularly active in blue states is that the Trump administration is being mean to them for political reasons.<\/p>\n

Their reasoning goes that Trump wants to occupy and bully their states with\u00a0ICE \u201cterrorists\u201d\u00a0who spend their time\u00a0murdering innocent American\u00a0citizens for no reason other than to cruelly \u201cown the libs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is retribution-style politics,\u201d\u00a0Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey\u00a0said in a recent CNN interview. \u201cThis is drama. This is performance politics at its worst, and it\u2019s hurting people and it\u2019s making us less safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is projection. It\u2019s Frey and friends who are all about \u201cperformance politics.\u201d They desperately want to convey the idea that Trump\u2019s immigration enforcement policies are the real problem.<\/p>\n

But the narrative that aggressive ICE enforcement in blue states is just some kind of political retribution is bunk for many reasons. The biggest one is that Democrats have actively pursued policies that would lead to a confrontation with the federal government over immigration law.<\/p>\n

This is happening by design.<\/p>\n

Sanctuary city and state policies aim at blocking the federal government from carrying out federal laws through non-compliance. If the federal government still intends to carry out the law, it doesn\u2019t have the same process at its disposal to do that as it does in states that cooperate.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has generally prioritized bringing in illegal aliens with a criminal record. This can be done more easily in states that cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security. Generally, local authorities detain individuals for various crimes, and when they discover that the criminal is an illegal alien with a deportation order, they hand them over to federal officers.<\/p>\n

Not so in blue states, where the federal government\u00a0must actively pursue illegal aliens\u00a0if it wishes to detain and deport them.<\/p>\n

CNN actually covered this\u00a0issue in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn states that voted for President Donald Trump, ICE agents are far more likely to arrest immigrants directly from prisons and jails,\u201d CNN reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Democratic-leaning states, by contrast, ICE is frequently arresting immigrants from worksites, streets and mass roundups that have sparked protests and intense backlash in cities such as Los Angeles. Most of those arrested don\u2019t have any criminal record,\u201d CNN continued.<\/p>\n

CNN further found that \u201c59% of arrests in red states took place in prisons and jails, while 70% of arrests in blue states took place in the community. That partisan gap between red and blue states existed before Trump\u2019s second term began\u2013but it has widened since last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sanctuary policies are triggering the federal government to engage in aggressive raids. These raids are less efficient, riskier, and more likely to sweep up illegal aliens who don\u2019t have an extensive criminal record outside the initial crime of violating U.S. border laws.<\/p>\n

This is a point my wife, Inez Stepman, and Vice President JD Vance recently made on X. Needless to say, I agree.<\/p>\n

Democrat politicians and their activist supporters certainly know that sanctuary policies encourage more aggressive ICE enforcement.<\/p>\n

The Prison Policy Initiative, a left-leaning non-profit organization, highlighted how the data\u00a0shows sanctuary policies\u00a0\u201cwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their December paper, titled \u201cNew ICE arrest data show the power of state and local governments to curtail mass deportations,\u201d notes that enforcement strategies differ in blue and red states based on the level of local cooperation.<\/p>\n

\u201cLocal jails and police departments are key to the Trump administration\u2019s mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ICE arrests of people who are already in police custody,\u201d the paper began. It celebrated that the administration was behind on its deportation goals \u201cin large part due to state and local efforts to protect immigrant communities and limit cooperation with ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of just accepting de facto nullification of federal law, the Department of Homeland Security has stepped up ICE raids to make up for non-cooperation in places like Minnesota.<\/p>\n

When you combine that with an aggressive, activist street element and irresponsible Democrat politicians like Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, you get situations like the ones that led to the ICE shooting of Rachel Good.<\/p>\n

The blame for this messy situation doesn\u2019t fall on the Trump administration. It falls on those who don\u2019t accept the results of the 2024 election, who insist that the results of the open borders insanity of President Joe Biden be locked in forever, and now look to do everything in their power to undermine the law.<\/p>\n

Originally published at The Daily Signal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of\u00a0The Right Side of History\u00a0podcast.\u00a0He is also the author of the book\u00a0The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jarrett Stepman, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, January 20, 2026A protester with an anti-ICE sign stands outside of the Henry Bishop Whipple Federal building on January 18, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. | Jim Vondruska\/Getty Images The Left\u00a0is desperate to make lawful deportation in America a giant, impossible mess to deal with. According to a new media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[2970,1234,342,3278,800],"class_list":["post-16934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-blue","tag-heres","tag-ice","tag-raids","tag-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}