2025 was marked by President Donald Trump’s U.S. immigration policies that scapegoated migrants and tested the constitutionality of Birthright Citizenship and the expansion of Denaturalization. Starting in Los Angeles, Americans quickly found out that Trump’s mass deportation will be challenged as it was the first city where protestors took to the streets in mass and California politicians – from the federal to state and city councils — rallied behind them.
Los Angelinos triggered a national debate on mass deportation and interjected compelling arguments of fairness and morality. Some Americans perhaps voted for mass deportation, but they were sold on an election promise that those being deported would be criminals, a collective menace to society.
But this hasn’t been the case. Criminal record data shows that most people booked into ICE detention – 75% — did not have a criminal conviction. To top, those who did, most of them had non-violent convictions. Furthermore, as Americans saw undocumented migrants who’ve been living in southern California for 20-plus years as productive and community-minded citizens get arrested, deported and separated from their families, suddenly Americans began to rethink the fairness of mass deportation in its current iteration.
2025 could be looked at as a year of growing pain, birth pain. The cruelty on immigrants has been exposed and in 2026 while there is still support for mass deportation, a majority of Americans oppose ICE’s tactics, oppose racial profiling, even oppose ICE and believe it has gone too far.
The silver lining of 2025’s cruel immigration tactics is that our immigrant community still has vast support among Americans, particularly Democrats and independents, who’ve been risking arrest and violence protesting ICE. Polls also show that a majority of Americans, over 65% support a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants.
The reality is ICE’s heavy-handed, aggressive, high-cost and often illegal tactics have turned public opinion against them.
Policy debates around immigration reform will continue to dominate national headlines as we’re seeing in 2026. Lawmakers will need to further explore the boundaries of mass deportation, stop ICE’s often illegal and overly aggressive tactics, provide pathways to citizenship, address real humanitarian needs of asylum seekers and finally work on comprehensive immigration reform. Politicians have kicked the can on comprehensive immigration for far too long which is why we are in the current chaos.
Affordability: Big Beautiful Bill and Trump’s tariffs go against it As it is every year, affordability is a top concern. In 2025, the passage and adoption into law of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) and Trump’s tariffs have made affordability more difficult for Americans.
Unless Congress will address some of the provisions in the OBBA immediately this year, millions of Americans will go uninsured or have their health insurance cost skyrocket. Additionally, many who have been relying on SNAP will lose their benefits.
State governments must now pick up the slack where the federal government made these cuts to healthcare and food insecurity. Critics point out that cost-cutting savings to Medicaid and SNAP will do little to slice the national deficit since the OBBA made permanent the 2017 tax cuts to the wealthy. So, critics say, taking away health and food benefits basically is a wealth transfer from those struggling to those already prospering with no real dent to the national deficit.
To make matters worse, Trump’s tariffs are hurting American consumers. 2025 and early 2026 data suggest that tariffs have resulted in a significant, ongoing financial burden for households. Economists and industry experts link tariffs on goods like coffee, beef, and seafood, along with steel/aluminum tariffs, to elevated grocery bills.
In Hawaii where the cost of living is already unbearable to large segments of the population, Medicaid and SNAP cuts, as well as Trump’s tariffs are worsening affordability, which Trump ran on in the last election.
There’s always a silver lining to be found and perhaps Americans can look to the midterms to render Trump impotent and prevent him from doing further damage. On improving Americans’ pocketbook and affordability, Trump has proven himself to be fraudulent, a bystander to Americans’ financial struggles.
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