Now, new research provides evidence that immigration raids did appear to lower school attendance. A Stanford University study found that parents kept their children out of school more often after raids swept California’s Central Valley this winter.

The findings suggest raids can harm student achievement and disrupt how schools function, even when they do not occur on or near school grounds. The study, by Thomas S. Dee, a professor of education at Stanford University, found that daily absences jumped 22 percent around the time raids occurred.

This week, the administration deployed troops to Los Angeles in response to protests against deportations. Absences went up, even though the district tried to reassure families that schools were safe.

The new paper looked at attendance data from five school districts in the southern part of the Central Valley, serving a total of over 100,000 children. Public schools do not track immigration status. But a majority of students in the region are Latino, many the children of farm workers with uncertain legal status. Those workers help produce about a quarter of the nation’s food — fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts.

Professor Dee examined three years of attendance data. He found an unusual spike in absences this past January and February following “Operation Return to Sender,” a series of immigration sweeps conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Dozens of day laborers and field workers were arrested at a Home Depot, in parking lots and at gas stations.

The operation took place in the final days of President Biden’s term. But it was seen as a sign of the immigration enforcement agency’s enthusiasm for President Trump’s agenda. Since then, immigration sweeps in California and across the country have been sporadic, though highly publicized.

And on Friday, immigration officials paused raids targeting farmworkers, among others, after the president acknowledged earlier in the week that the raids were hurting the agricultural industry.

In the Central Valley, immigrant parents said that after the January raids, they feared being arrested while their children were at school and being deported without them. Rather than risk separation, some parents kept children home.

The spike in absences is equivalent to the average student missing about 15 days of school each year, up from 12 days, according to Professor Dee’s paper.

He called the findings “a canary in the coal mine” for public education. If absences continue to be elevated, they could threaten student learning and children’s mental health.

Funding is also at risk, since schools in California are paid according to student attendance.

Teachers may have to adjust the curriculum to meet the needs of students who have fallen behind after missing class. School counselors and social workers are already devoting more of their hours to tracking down missing children and to treating their anxiety about deportation, according to educators in the region.

The new paper echoes past research that found that under Presidents Trump, Biden and Obama, immigration raids led to decreases in student attendance at nearby schools.

Many immigrants in the Central Valley said that while fears of deportation had always hung over them, anxiety has never been higher. It is fueled by Mr. Trump’s aggressive agenda and rhetoric, and by stories of family separation and children placed in foster care, often shared via social media.

One Mexican father of two schoolchildren in Fresno, ages 14 and 6, said that deportation alongside his wife and children would mean losing possessions, wealth and his work as a mechanic. In California, he and his wife, a farmworker, had carefully built a life.

But while losing that life would be difficult, deportation without their children, he said, was simply unthinkable.

Like other migrant parents, the man asked to remain unnamed because of his uncertain legal status.

He has cut out many of his family’s nonessential trips outside their home but has continued to send his children to school.

Many others have not.

A Fresno mother, also from Mexico, was so fearful of being deported if she left her home that she paid someone else to drive her daughter to school. She also asked that her name not be used.

She eventually resumed drop-offs, which is when she noticed a change at the school’s doors. There were fewer children waiting in line to file into the building. Half a dozen families she used to see at drop-off were no longer there.

In a written statement responding to the research findings, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said, “Illegal immigration is incredibly disruptive to all Americans, including families, students and teachers. The Trump administration won’t apologize for enforcing the law and restoring order to American communities.”

The spike in missed learning is occurring as educators continue to address a pre-existing crisis of chronic absence, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In Fresno Unified, the region’s largest school district, Superintendent Misty Her makes several home visits per week, seeking to speak with families whose children have stopped coming to school.

Her goal is not to shame them, she said, but to understand why and to offer help.

In the past, she said, many seasonal farm workers would relocate to work in the fields during harvests and leave their children in the city with family members or friends, so that the children could continue to attend school.

Now, she said, parents are bringing their young children with them, because they are fearful of being deported without them.

While she tries to convince parents to send their children back to the classroom, she also offers the option of enrolling students in the school district’s virtual academy.

“We get them their laptop and a hot spot so they can continue online,” she said, noting that for some students, that routine worked well during pandemic school closures.

Ms. Her said she and her staff had carefully tracked the increase in absences reported in Professor Dee’s study. Younger children have been more likely to miss school than older ones, according to the paper, which fits a pattern in which undocumented parents keep their most vulnerable children home out of fear of separation.

Before January’s immigration raids, school attendance in the Central Valley had been improving, according to Professor Dee’s analysis. But anxiety over deportation returned some immigrant families to a cloistered, pandemic-like existence.

Immigration sweeps “can essentially create what we found from Covid — this generation of students who have a patently different experience with schooling,” said Jacob Kirksey, a professor of education at Texas Tech University who has studied how immigration arrests increase absences and lower student achievement.

But he argued that policymakers should be cautious about directing fearful families toward virtual learning.

“Kids learn better in person,” he said, warning about a further loosening of the expectation that students show up for school, day in and day out.

Professor Kirksey said Professor Dee’s study was methodologically strong. He also suggested it could encourage policy change.

Since immigration enforcement lies outside the control of school systems, states could consider limiting the practice of tying school funding to attendance, he said, and could see raids as events more like natural disasters, which prompt extra funding and support.

Some of the absent children may never come back to school, because their families may have left the country voluntarily — the stated intention of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda.

Nereida Galvez works at a Fresno nonprofit that supports immigrants from Indigenous Mexican communities. She was in contact with one family that decided to leave the United States.

“They were afraid that their children would be left alone,” she said, “so they decided to take their children with them.”

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The calls come as shocking footage emerged from around the Southland showing dramatic arrests and aggressive tactics used by federal agents on city streets.

“I’m asking you, please listen to me, stop terrorizing our residents,” said Mayor Jessica Ancona of El Monte, who said she was hit by rubber bullets during a raid in her city.

In Los Angeles, City Council leaders accused federal officers in unmarked vehicles of brazenly ‘abducting’ people off the streets without warrants and based on racial profiling. Signs of terror and tension are palpable across the region.

On Wednesday, masked men grabbed a pedestrian in a church parking lot, and unmarked trucks rammed a car with a young family inside, engulfing a baby and toddler in smoke or tear gas. In Orange County on Wednesday, rumors of parents being deported spread through an elementary school, prompting the district to assure families that commencement and award ceremonies would not be open to the public or warrantless immigration raids. In Santa Ana on Tuesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials positioned a rooftop sniper outside a federal building with a rifle trained down at a group of middle-school-aged protesters.

Pastor Tanya Lopez at Downey Memorial Christian Church experienced the fear firsthand.

She witnessed armed men in masks and unmarked vehicles arrest a man Wednesday morning in the parking lot of her church.

“I am a mother, a first-generation daughter of immigrants myself,” Lopez said. “This is not just an immigrant issue. Who knows if this man was a citizen? They were not letting him answer any questions, provide any identification. They surrounded him and just started to grab him.”

“I am disheartened. My daughters were crying. I am completely heartbroken that this is how they started their summer break,” Lopez added. “Now I have to not just try to regulate my own mental health and own sudden rush of adrenaline and everything else. I have to now remind my daughters that everything is going to be okay because they told me that they were scared that (the agents) were going to shoot their mommy today.”

“They are coming, and they are relentless, and cruelty is the point,” Lopez said. “So we will meet that cruelty with love, with justice and compassion because we are non-violent.”

Her husband, a Reverend at the church, said he told the agents he didn’t want this on his property and that’s when the agents told him “the whole country is our property.”

“When someone tells that to you with a weapon in their hands and on their body, that is a very clear message,” Rev. Al Lopez said. “As a man of faith, that is not allowed, that is not correct, and that goes against everything that our country stands for.”

Across the county in Boyle Heights, federal agents in unmarked trucks boxed in and rammed a sedan with a family inside, including an infant and toddler. Armed officers jumped out and deployed smoke or tear gas on the vehicle, and ordered out of the vehicle Christian Damian Cerno-Camacho, a protester suspected of punching a border patrol agent.

The dramatic arrest was caught on video and stirred outrage in the community, but Homeland Security officials defended their work of the officers.

Homeland Security officials responded to Patch’s request for comment about the crash with a statement by Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“This was no hit and run. This was a targeted arrest of a violent rioter who punched a CBP officer. When Homeland Security Investigations tried to arrest Christian Damian Cerno-Camacho for the assault, he attempted to flee,” she said. “He was ultimately arrested and taken into custody.”

“Our officers are facing a 413% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest murders, rapists, and gang members,” she added. “Secretary Noem’s message to the LA rioters is clear: you will not stop us or slow us down.”

Archbishop José H. Gomez on Wednesday called for peaceful demonstrations and also urged the federal government not to make ordinary families suffer.

“We all agree that we don’t want undocumented immigrants who are known terrorists or violent criminals in our communities,” Gomez said. “But there is no need for the government to carry out enforcement actions in a way that provokes fear and anxiety among ordinary, hardworking immigrants and their families.”

Meanwhile, the commander in charge of the troops said about 500 National Guard soldiers deployed to the Los Angeles protests have been trained to accompany agents on immigration operations. And while some troops have already gone on such missions, he said it’s too early to say if that will continue, even after the protests die down.

Speaking alongside the other mayors at a news conference, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the raids spread fear at the behest of the White House.

“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers. But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe,” she said. “You’re trying to cause fear and panic.”

Those who have been caught up in the nationwide raids include asylum seekers, people who overstayed their visas and migrants awaiting their day in immigration court.

The administration has cited the protests in its decision to deploy the military. Referring to the demonstrations, which have been mostly concentrated in the LA business district, the Democratic mayor added: “If you drive a few blocks outside of downtown, you don’t know that anything is happening in the city at all.”

The city leaders who joined the call for ICE raids to stop include:

• Paramount Mayor Peggy Lemons
• Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores
• Vernon Mayor Judith Merlo
• South Gate Mayor Maria Davila
• Ventura Mayor Dr. Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios
• Bell Gardens Mayor Jorgel Chavez
• El Monte Mayor Jessica Ancona
• Montebello Mayor Sal Melendez
• Santa Paula Mayor Pedro Chavez
• Santa Monica Mayor Lana Negrete
• West Hollywood Mayor Chelsea Byers
• Cudahy Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez
• Fillmore Mayor Pro Tem Albert Mendez
• Paramount Vice Mayor Brenda Olmos
• Ventura Deputy Mayor Doug Halter
• Lynwood Councilwoman Lorraine Avila Moore
• Artesia Councilmember Melissa Ramoso
• Downey Councilman Mario Trujillo
• Paramount Councilmember Vilma Cuellar Stallings
• Pico Rivera Councilmember Andrew Lara
• South Gate Councilmember Gil Hurtado
• Vernon Councilmember Crystal Larios
• Vernon Councilmember Leticia Lopez

California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has asked a federal court to put an emergency stop to the military helping immigration agents in the nation’s second-largest city. This week, guardsmen began standing protectively around agents as they carry out arrests. A judge set a hearing for Thursday.

The military is now closer to engaging in law enforcement actions such as deportations, as Trump has promised in his crackdown. The Guard has the authority to temporarily detain people who attack officers, but any arrests must be made by law enforcement.

The president posted on the Truth Social platform that the city “would be burning to the ground” if he had not sent in the military.

But now, the protests have spread nationwide. Demonstrations have spread to Dallas and Austin in Texas, and Chicago and New York, where thousands rallied and more arrests were made. A nationwide protest is scheduled for Saturday.

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The clashes came on the third day of demonstrations against Trump’s immigration crackdown in the region, as the arrival of around 300 federal troops spurred anger and fear among some residents.

By midday, hundreds had gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where people were detained after earlier immigration raids. Protesters directed chants of “shame” and “go home” at members of the National Guard, who stood shoulder to shoulder, carrying long guns and riot shields.

After some protesters closely approached the guard members, another set of uniformed officers advanced on the group, shooting smoke-filled canisters into the street.

Minutes later, the Los Angeles Police Department fired rounds of crowd-control munitions to disperse the protesters, who they said were assembled unlawfully. Much of the group then moved to block traffic on the 101 freeway.

The presence of the Guard was “inflaming tensions” in the city, according to a letter sent to Trump by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday afternoon. He formerly requested Trump remove the guard members, which he called a “serious breach of state sovereignty.”

Trump has said the National Guard was necessary because Newsom and other Democrats have failed to stanch recent protests targeting immigration agents.

Their deployment appeared to be the first time in decades that a state’s national guard was activated without a request from its governor, a significant escalation against those who have sought to hinder the administration’s mass deportation efforts.

Deployment follows days of protest

The arrival of the National Guard followed two days of protests that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount, a heavily Latino city south of the city, and neighboring Compton.

As federal agents set up a staging area Saturday near a Home Depot in Paramount, demonstrators attempted to block Border Patrol vehicles, with some hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, agents in riot gear unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.

Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed above 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement.

The recent protests remain far smaller than past events that have brought the National Guard to Los Angeles, including the Watts and Rodney King riots, and the 2020 protests against police violence, in which Newsom requested the assistance of federal troops.

The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Trump says there will be ‘very strong law and order’

In a directive Saturday, Trump invoked a legal provision allowing him to deploy federal service members when there is ”a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

He said he had authorized the deployment of 2,000 members of the National Guard.

Trump told reporters as he prepared to board Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey, Sunday that there were “violent people” in Los Angeles “and they’re not gonna get away with it.”

Asked if he planned to send U.S. troops to Los Angeles, Trump replied: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.” He didn’t elaborate.

Trump also said that California officials who stand in the way of the deportations could face charges. A Wisconsin judge was arrested last month on accusations she helped a man evade immigration authorities.

“If officials stay in the way of law and order, yeah, they will face charges,” Trump said.

Newsom called Trump on Friday night and they spoke for about 40 minutes, according to the governor’s office. It was not clear if they spoke Saturday or Sunday.

There was some confusion surrounding the exact timing of the guard’s arrival. Shortly before midnight local time, Trump congratulated the National Guard on a “job well done.” But less than an hour later, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said troops had yet to arrive in the city.

Defense secretary threatens to deploy active-duty Marines ‘if violence continues’

In a statement Sunday, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin accused California’s politicians and protesters of “defending heinous illegal alien criminals at the expense of Americans’ safety.”

“Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer,” McLaughlin added.

The troops included members of the California Army National Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, according to a social media post from the Department of Defense.

In a signal of the administration’s aggressive approach, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty Marines “if violence continues” in the region.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said the order by Trump reflected “a president moving this country rapidly into authoritarianism” and “usurping the powers of the United States Congress.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lives in Los Angeles, said the immigration arrests and Guard deployment were designed as part of a “cruel, calculated agenda to spread panic and division.”

She said she supports those “standing up to protect our most fundamental rights and freedoms.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, endorsed the president’s move, doubling down on Republicans’ criticisms of California Democrats.

“Gavin Newsom has shown an inability or an unwillingness to do what is necessary, so the president stepped in,” Johnson said.

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California leaders have gradually expanded the services available to undocumented immigrants, expressing a sense of obligation to workers who toiled in fields and factories and contributed to the state’s prosperity.

Other Democratic-led states have done the same, with growing confidence that they were free from federal interference as long as they paid for the benefits themselves.

But President Trump and congressional Republicans are now using various levers to upend those efforts from Washington. And Democrats, including three possible presidential candidates who have proposed scaling back immigrant benefits for their own reasons, are left wrestling with how to respond.

Republicans are driven, some of them say, by a belief that benefits for immigrants entice people to enter the country illegally. Other Republicans also say they object to the idea that Americans’ tax dollars — no matter where they are collected — go toward undocumented immigrants.

“They can just come in here and sign up for health care, and we’re supposed to pay for it at the expense of some of our most vulnerable citizens?” said James Gallagher, the Republican leader of the California State Assembly. “I don’t think that’s a right use of our priorities.”

In liberal states, Republicans have newfound leverage from Washington after being powerless for years to block the expansion of immigrant services in their states.

Last month, Mr. Trump signed an executive order targeting state laws “that provide in-state higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-state American citizens.” This week, the Department of Homeland Security started an investigation of a California program that helps some impoverished older and disabled immigrants, warning that “the gravy train is over.”

Perhaps the biggest concern for Democratic states is the reconciliation bill that Congress is considering, which calls for penalizing states that use their own funds to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. That could cost states billions of dollars and make it financially untenable to continue those programs. It would also force states to decide between cutting some health care services for citizens or all services for undocumented immigrants, potentially creating a political wedge in Democratic states.

“They’re trying to create incentives and punishments for those states that provide benefits to undocumented people,” said Kevin R. Johnson, former dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis.

“The bigger picture is President Trump and his administration are dead set against immigrants, legal or undocumented, receiving any public benefits from the federal or state government,” he added.

Fourteen states provide health care to undocumented children from low-income families, and half of those also cover at least some undocumented adults, according to KFF.

Already, some of those states have begun retrenching on immigrant health care because of their own fiscal problems, even before Republicans in Congress approve the reconciliation bill. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz and state lawmakers this week agreed to scale back health care benefits for undocumented adults to solve a budget gap, prompting outcry from progressive leaders. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker has proposed eliminating health care for undocumented middle-age adults.

And Gov. Gavin Newsom of California called this week for a freeze in undocumented enrollees in the state’s Medi-Cal program, as well as a $100 monthly charge for immigrants who continue to receive benefits.

Democratic leaders say their moves were driven by the realities of their budgets, not by a need to acquiesce to the wishes of Republicans in Washington. But the optics are unavoidable, and many on the left wondered this week if Mr. Newsom’s proposal was his latest attempt to moderate his image as he considers a presidential run in a nation less friendly to undocumented immigrants than it was several years ago.

The situation has already begun to split Democrats, with some saying that the party should fight for undocumented immigrants rather than retrench in the face of Mr. Trump’s moves.

“It’s always really easy to pick on immigrant communities,” said Lena Gonzalez, a Democratic state senator who leads the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

“We have seen this playbook time and time again,” she added. “We’re valued enough to be at work and be productive, but we’re not valued enough to be given a basic right, which I think is health care.”

In Vermont, legislators in 2021 overwhelmingly approved a plan to use state funds to provide health care for undocumented children and pregnant women.

“This is a population that is critical to the economics of the state,” said Alyssa Black, a Democratic state representative from Essex, Vt. “We love to tout our dairy industry, and our dairy farms survive on their labor.”

She specifically recalled the legislative testimony of one mother, an immigrant from Guatemala, who said that when both her sons were sick, she could take only one to the doctor — the younger boy, who was born in the U.S.

Ms. Black said she had learned on Wednesday of looming fiscal consequences for states providing benefits to undocumented residents. “My heart just broke,” she said. “How can the federal government come in and determine what states can do with their state dollars?”

Two dozen states allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges, and most of them also let those students apply for financial aid, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, which collects education data. They are mostly Democratic-led states like New York, but even a handful of Republican states like Texas and Utah provide such discounts. Florida, however, ended in-state tuition for undocumented students this year.

Six states provide cash assistance to some low-income immigrants who are older, blind or disabled but don’t qualify for federal Supplemental Security Income, according to the National Immigration Law Center. At least five states offer food assistance to some noncitizens.

Though the federal government doesn’t pay for these programs, they’re being scrutinized by Mr. Trump, who previously tried to deny green cards to immigrants who legally used any federal benefits such as food stamps and housing vouchers. He wanted to vastly expand the so-called “public charge” rule that has discouraged citizenship applicants from relying on public aid, an effort later rejected by courts.

“Any area where there’s public taxpayer dollars that are being used in a way that incentivizes lawbreaking is problematic and should be revisited,” said Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican of California.

Mr. Kiley spent years as a lawmaker in Sacramento, where he was in the political minority, routinely objecting to California policies but lacking the power to stop them. Now in Congress, he is part of a majority that is trying to change how states like California spend their dollars.

The Republican reconciliation bill, which conservatives blocked Friday to seek deeper spending cuts, would cut Medicaid funding to states that use their own funds to pay for health care for low-income undocumented immigrants. Under the legislation, 14 states stand to collectively lose $75 billion from 2028 to 2034 if they keep those programs in place, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

That approach amounts to “weaponizing federal funding,” said Xavier Becerra, who was President Joseph R. Biden’s secretary of health and human services. Mr. Becerra said he expected states to fight in court to stop the federal government’s interference.

“Much of what they’re doing ultimately will be overturned, especially if it starts to go into areas that the federal government doesn’t control,” said Mr. Becerra, a former attorney general of California who is now a Democratic candidate for governor.

Immigrant groups fear that the federal government may have other motivations for dipping into state affairs.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had subpoenaed Los Angeles County for records, including the identities of people who applied for the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants. The department said it was exploring whether the state had used federal funds to support ineligible noncitizens.

It was believed to be one of the first requests this year for state data on immigrants outside the criminal justice system.

The Trump administration’s attempt to collect “personal data, postal and sensitive data from people who are seeking benefits for which they are eligible, compromises their privacy and will chill access to critical services for California residents,” said Tanya Broder, senior counsel at the National Immigration Law Center.

If Democratic-led states thought they were on safe ground to provide their own benefits to immigrants without interference from Washington, it may have been because past Republican leaders believed in upholding states’ rights.

Mike Madrid, a “never Trump” Republican and former political director of the California Republican Party, said the federal government’s actions to disrupt how states serve their residents ran counter to longstanding conservative orthodoxy.

“This is unconscionable from a classically conservative position,” Mr. Madrid said, “and it just speaks to how much, not just the Republican Party has changed, but how much the country has changed.”

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Trump said he would immediately halt all illegal entry at the border, adding that he would invoke an 18th-century law to carry out his plan to rid the country of people here without authorization.

“We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people,” Trump said in his inauguration address in the Capitol rotunda.

In the months leading up to his election and inauguration, Trump promised to overhaul the immigration system and border security on “Day 1” through executive orders in a sidestep of the regular legislative process. At his noontime inauguration ceremony, Trump said he would sign the executive orders later Monday.

The executive branch has expansive authority on matters of immigration, but many of the president’s orders are certain to face swift legal challenge.

Trump has pledged the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, to be carried out under the direction of Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, architects of his first administration’s zero-tolerance policy that led to thousands of migrant parents being separated from their children. Trump’s attempts will be hampered without substantial additional funding from Congress, where Republicans hold slim majorities.

Illegal border crossings have fallen sharply over the last year, with current levels the lowest they’ve been since Trump left office. The emergency declaration allows Trump to unlock federal resources to fund construction of the border wall, as he did in 2019.

In June, the Biden administration began effectively blocking most migrants from seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border. The restrictions didn’t apply to those who waited for appointments to enter legally at official ports of entry.

On Monday, hundreds of asylum seekers learned that use of CBP One, a phone app through which they made the appointments, had ended and their scheduled interviews had been canceled. Tens of thousands of migrants, some of whom had waited more than six months for an interview, are now stranded in Mexico. In recent months, more migrants had entered legally with CBP One appointments than those who were arrested after entering the U.S. illegally.

“As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” Trump said. “We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”

Another order would designate drug cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.

Other orders will bring back policies from Trump’s first term that Biden had discontinued, such as Remain in Mexico. Under that policy, asylum seekers must stay across the border as their asylum cases are being adjudicated.

Trump said he would end what conservatives refer to as “catch and release,” the practice of releasing migrants from custody while they await conclusions to what are often years-long cases in immigration court.

There is not enough space for federal authorities to detain all those in deportation proceedings. Last fiscal year, Congress funded 41,500 beds at a cost of $3.4 billion. As of Dec. 29, more than 39,000 immigrants were being detained pending deportation proceedings.

Trump said he would use the U.S. military for border security efforts.

“By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil,” Trump said.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, last used during World War II to send people from Japan, Germany and Italy to internment camps, allows the president to arrest, imprison or deport immigrants from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime. Trump could use it to conduct rapid deportations without the typically required legal processes. But legal experts say courts would probably strike down Trump’s interpretation as beyond what the law allows.

Brad Jones, a political science professor at UC Davis, noted that many executive orders during Trump’s first term withstood court challenges, including those on the border wall and Remain in Mexico. With a conservative Supreme Court majority, challenges to him overstepping permissible powers may ultimately be knocked down, Jones said.

“These executive orders are, in my view, essentially setting the stage to think of the border as a war zone,” he said.

During a second speech in Emancipation Hall, Trump praised Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who has supported a crackdown at the border and bused migrants to liberal states such as New York and California. Trump repeated unfounded claims that nearly every country in the world was sending criminals to the U.S., saying Abbott had to deal with them himself. But, bragging about his promised border wall expansion, Trump signaled that soon Abbott’s situation would change.

“That wall will go up so fast,” he said.

The Trump administration has been planning a large immigration raid in Chicago this week, but Homan told news outlets that officials are reconsidering their plans because the leaked details put agents at risk. Other large immigrant communities, including Los Angeles, could be targeted in future raids.

In California, a 2018 law enacted in response to Trump’s first administration limits state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The California Values Act prevents local police from holding someone for extra time for transfer to immigration custody, but allows them to notify federal agents of a person’s release if they have certain felonies or high-level misdemeanor convictions.

Some local law enforcement leaders, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, have signaled a willingness to circumvent the law to help immigration agents carry out deportations. Attempts to circumvent the law will not be tolerated, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said. “We’re prepared to take action against any law enforcement agency that doesn’t follow the law,” Bonta said Friday.

Bonta said he also stands ready to fight Trump in court. The California Department of Justice sued the first Trump administration more than 100 times.

“If he tries to invoke the National Guard or the military to participate in his mass deportations, if he seeks to end birthright citizenship — a constitutional right — and that harms U.S. citizens, if he tries to attack sanctuary jurisdiction and status on the immigration side, we’re ready to act on day one,” Bonta said.

Some California immigrants are already on edge after Border Patrol agents carried out dozens of arrests around Bakersfield this month, questioning people at Home Depot, gas stations and on their way to work on farms.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the organization has organized a vigil Tuesday night to create a safe space for immigrants to gather and learn more about Trump’s initial executive orders. She emphasized that because Los Angeles is considered a natural disaster area, immigration agents should not be conducting enforcement operations there.

“The community of Los Angeles is concerned by what is coming, but we’re not cowering in panic,” Salas said.

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