Life Inside the Undocumented Underground
During President Donald Trump’s second term, dramatic raids staged by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have become a part of life. We want to show you what it looks like up close and on the ground in an American city. It is a story of fear, resilience and resistance.
TPM has spent the past two months reporting on the effects of Trump’s mass deportation program in New York, one of the cities facing the prospect of a full-scale ICE invasion. We went to the courts where Trump’s deportation machine is firing judges and ripping migrants from the halls. We walked those same hallways with masked officers and a growing network of volunteers, activists, and advocates determined to fight this new system. We also spent time with immigrants who described the dangers that drove them to leave their homes, the new fears they face in this country, and their drive to continue despite these long odds.
The wave of ICE raids is part of the “bloody” vision of mass deportations promised by Trump during his campaign to return to the White House. Since taking office, he has joined the Republican-controlled Congress to build deportation and detention infrastructure through a $170 billion spending increase in the ICE budget. This money aims to expel one million migrants from the country every year. Although the actual annual number of evictions is well below this goal, it is higher than it has been in decades. The number of people detained by ICE has also increased dramatically, reaching an unprecedented 65,000.
While the Trump administration has claimed its immigration efforts are aimed at removing “the worst of the worst” from the country, the data shows that this is simply false. An analysis by the Marshall Project, based on documents obtained from ICE through a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that in the first five months of this year, two-thirds of the more than 120,000 people deported from the United States had no criminal convictions. The Marshall Project further found that most deportees with criminal records had committed minor crimes and only 12 percent of them “had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent crime.” A CBS investigation found that nearly half of migrants detained by ICE in November 2025 faced no criminal charges or convictions. In other words, rather than serious criminals, the majority of people targeted by Trump’s deportation complex are simply members of the community.
For much of the last year, Chicago and Los Angeles hosted some of ICE’s largest raids and counterprotests. More recently, rumors coming out of Washington and the election of progressive Mayor Zohran Mamdani have left many activists and immigrants in New York expecting they will be next and preparing for the worst. The first sign that these predictions might come true came in late October when the city conducted its most high-profile immigration enforcement campaign yet, when personnel from five different federal agencies descended on Canal Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood to arrest street vendors. The next day, during widespread protests, migrants and activists were arrested.
In the weeks following the Canal Street raid, TPM assessed the consequences. We discovered a deep fear, but also something less expected.
Throughout the city, there is a sort of modern underground railway with programs offering services to migrants, including food, clothing and free clinics that provide advice and assistance in legal proceedings. Volunteers also accompany migrants as they face masked ICE agents waiting in the hallways of downtown courts.
Fearing searches and detentions, many programs providing services to migrants have increased security measures. They keep their doors and do not advertise their locations. As we accessed these spaces and spoke with the migrants and activists inside, we often agreed not to use people’s real names or identify specific locations.
In the coming days, we will share a series based on this reporting, based on conversations with dozens of sources. This is an in-depth look at some of the extralegal excesses of the current administration and the efforts people are making to fight back.
