The White House lawn was lined with around 100 mug shots of alleged illegal immigrants who have been arrested and the crimes they allegedly committed, as President Donald Trump tries to draw attention to his actions during the first 100 days of his second term.
The names and exact locations of the individuals are not on the posters, which line “Pebble Beach,” where television crews typically do live shots in front of the White House—among their alleged crimes are sexual offenses and murder.
Why It Matters
One of Trump’s flagship campaign promises was mass deportations, and while polling shows Americans are broadly supportive of a crackdown on illegal immigration, including among Democrats, there is skepticism about some of the tougher methods of detaining and deporting people.
The Trump administration is facing multiple legal fights over its deportations, challenging its uses of executive power and disputing some of the allegations against those it is removing from the country.
Opponents say the administration is skirting due process and in some cases wrongly deporting people. But the White House says it is giving all necessary due process and is facing obstacles from politically motivated judges who are overreaching their power.
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What To Know
Kaelan Dorr, deputy assistant to the president and White House deputy communications director, posted an image of some of the signs to X, formerly Twitter, on Monday morning.
“White House lawn looks a little different this AM,” Dorr wrote. “And they say yard signs don’t win elections…”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later shared a video of the posters on X, ahead of a briefing with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.
At the briefing, Homan said he has worked under six presidents on the border and that it is now more secure than at any other point in his career, noting a sharp increase in apprehensions and deportations since Trump moved back into the White House.
He said the administration had deported around 139,000 people so far.
Trump had hailed an immigration raid in Colorado Springs on Saturday and linked it to his administration’s legal fight over its invocation of the 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to speed up the deportation process.
He has declared some of the drug gangs operating in the U.S., including the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua, as terrorist organizations.
“A big Raid last night on some of the worst people illegally in our Country — Drug Dealers, Murderers, and other Violent Criminals, of all shapes and sizes, and Judges don’t want to send them back to where they came from,” Trump wrote on Truth Social
“If we don’t win this battle at the Supreme Court, our Country, as we know it, is FINISHED! It will be a Crime ridden MESS. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
What People Are Saying
U.S. District Judge David Briones in El Paso, Texas, temporarily blocked the deportations of Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
He wrote in his ruling that “due process requirements for the removal of noncitizens are long established” under the Immigration and Nationality Act as well as previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
“There is no doubt the Executive Branch’s unprecedented peacetime use of wartime power has caused chaos and uncertainty for individual petitions as well as the judicial branch in how to manage and evaluate the Executive’s claims of Tren de Aragua membership, and the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act as a whole,” Briones wrote.
What’s Next
Trump’s multiple legal battles on immigration continue, testing the limits of his power and the ability of the courts to enforce them.
This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.
