SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Last week’s operation at a Sacramento Home Depot appeared to open the door for immigration officials to escalate the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation scheme in Northern California, which until recently had largely escaped the White House’s focus on the South State.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it was returning 700 Marines stationed in Los Angeles to their home base, though 2,000 California National Guard members remain in the city. And while court orders temporarily stopped the administration from conducting warrantless stops in Central and Southern California, Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed significant increases in arrests throughout California in 2025, especially in May and June.

“Across the country, arrests of criminal illegal immigrants have soared as President Donald J. Trump makes good on his promise to rid our communities of these threats to public safety,” the White House boasted in a press release Tuesday, “making sure illegal alien killers, rapists, gangbangers, and other violent criminals find no safe harbor.”

Trump’s growing popularity in California, and his administration’s approach of challenging, if not outright ignoring, existing immigration policies have motivated the administration to hit the Golden State harder than it did the first time Trump took over the White House.

“Trump has become more emboldened,” said Manuel Barajas, a Sacramento State sociology professor, comparing Trump’s first administration to his second. This time around, he has amplified his powers in Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Barajas described President Trump’s style as “cruel theatrics” that “play to his base’s anger.”

Immigration arrests surge in 2025

Compared to the first six months of 2024, there have been statewide ICE arrest increases of more than 122.1% in the same January to June period of 2025, according to the Deportation Data Project, which compiles data from ICE, Customs and Border Patrol and Justice Department Executive Office of Immigration Review. In the first half of 2025 alone, data showed an almost 20% increase compared to total California ICE arrests in the entirety of 2024.

In June 2024, ICE data showed 412 arrests across California. One year later, that number increased more than five times in June 2025 with 2,527 arrests — a 513.3% increase. Data from May 2024 showed 531 arrests statewide while May 2025 data showed 1,173 arrests — a 120.9% increase.

In Sacramento, ICE arrests have more than doubled in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year, marking a 109.5% surge. With 88 arrests by June 2025, Sacramento has already surpassed the 2024 total of 66 local arrests by more than 33%.

‘Justice is coming too late’

Shortly after the Nov. 2024 presidential election, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned that the president would be “sharper” the second time around, bolstered by years of grievances and a more disciplined administration. After retaking the White House, Trump began fulfilling a key campaign promise to ramp up deportations. In late May, his chief immigration czars Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem set a daily quota of 3,000 arrests.

Anthony Rendon, the Democratic state Assembly Speaker during Trump’s first term, said he did not expect the administration to continue abiding by court decisions limiting their conduct.

“I’m often surprised that Trump even pays attention to court rulings. It’s shocking to me, and I don’t think it’ll last much longer,” he said. “I think the idea of traditional protections and separation of powers and balance of powers, and the sort of Republican ideals of a republic comprised of individual states, I think all that, to an extent, is out the window.”

Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief agent who led the Sacramento raid, said in a video that his agency would continue to “secure the homeland” and defy state laws protecting immigrants from deportation, because there was “no such thing as sanctuary.”

Almost half of the people targeted for arrest in 2025 either have only pending criminal charges or were arrested based on “other immigration violators.” Some 52.6% of California arrests in 2025 involved those with a criminal conviction, according to data.

That matters little to officials targeting people for arrest, according to Xavier Becerra, the former state Attorney General now running for governor.

Federal law enforcement has now essentially “acquiesced to the Trump campaign to do deportations,” he said.

“Justice is coming too late for a lot of folks.”

Bovino blamed a 2017 law limiting the state’s cooperation with federal immigration officials for allowing “aggravated felons, child rapists, standing in front of big box stores, walking our streets with impunity” in an interview with Fox 11.

Barajas, the Sac State professor, said that while immigration in California has spiked in recent years, the underlying reason is not solely the political tensions between the president and California’s governor.

“[California] is being targeted, not just because of Gavin Newsom,” he said. “But California is the wealthiest state in the nation … and they’re seeing the demographic changes, and in their minds, it’s a threat to see California becoming more diversified.”

When it comes to immigration enforcement, Barajas believes that anti-immigration actions have been on the rise for the past several decades. “It doesn’t matter who’s president. The nation has always been less welcoming to those who are more distant from the hierarchies — white, male, middle class, upper class.”

Despite immigration being an ongoing focus across presidential administrations, from Obama to Biden to Trump, he pointed to the Trump administration’s particularly dramatic approach. “The other ones were probably being more anti-immigrant, but they were not making a show out of it.”

Roger Salazar, a California Democratic strategist, said the administration had “learned a lesson” from their last term, when they had adhered to legal norms, like respecting court decisions.

“I think what the Trump administration is doing this time is saying, ‘Look, we don’t care. We’re going to push the boundaries,’” he said. “Whether they reach the legal limit or go beyond it, ‘We’re going to push beyond it or go as hard as we can, and we’ll see who stops us.’”

Trump’s Golden State allies

Part of what has emboldened Trump is the increase in support he has received not just from a national electorate shifting to the right, but also from within the Golden State itself.

In addition to help from Bovino, Trump appointees and fellow MAGA devotees Harmeet Dhillon and Bill Essayli have used their perches within the Department of Justice to initiate investigations into state agencies and policies.

Essayli, a former state lawmaker turned Los Angeles federal prosecutor, and Dhillon, a former conservative San Francisco attorney who now leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sued California earlier this month over a decade-old state law allowing transgender athletes to participate in school sports.

Both have cheered the administration’s increased immigration raids, both in Los Angeles and statewide. Essayli said last week that local sheriffs had “no choice” in complying with DOJ officials’ request that sheriffs transfer migrants detained in local jails: “This is a good thing.”

Given California’s limited options in combating federal power, Rendon said any opposition has to be “grassroots” at the local level.

“I went to one protest. I saw politicians standing up on stage and giving speeches, and I left. I mean, that’s not what we need at this point. It has to be people engaging in civil disobedience,” he said.

“It has to be people not adhering to what masked paramilitary fascists are telling them to do. It’s 1789 now. I think it’s at that level now.”

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