by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

The Trump administration’s deadly crackdown in Democratically-controlled states has left immigration lawyers scrambling to assist its targets as increasingly vague edicts are used to justify the brutality.

Jonathan Fung, director of legal services for the Immigration Resource Center of San Gabriel Valley, has been working with immigrants for more than a decade. We first spoke in December 2025, prior to the killings of Renee Good and Andrew Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. Since then, “we’ve definitely seen the use of fear as an actual strategy and tactic by the administration,” Fung said. “I don’t think it’s by accident. I think part of their overall goal is to make people afraid to apply for things that they qualify for.”

The Trump administration has upended long-standing immigration law, both on the streets and in the courts, Fung said, leaving everyone — immigrants, lawyers, and legal residents alike — uncertain.

“Things that we’ve relied on before as normal practice and understanding of statutes and the law are out the window,” Fung said.

One example is the leak last month of a previously secret May 12, 2025 internal memo from the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons claiming it is legal for immigration agents to enter private residences without a judicial warrant.

“Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose,” reads the memo in part.

Fung disputes the memo’s justification.

“That is not how we have ever interpreted the Fourth Amendment, where you can just sign your own paper and say, ‘I’m allowed to go to your house,’ and have the same person who signed that to go into your house,” Fung said. “That is not appropriate. It’s from the same agency, using administrative warrants that are signed by the same people who told them to go there in the first place. So, yeah, that’s not going to fly, and we know that they probably kept it secret because they know that they will get litigated and sued, and they’re going to lose.”

Another example is the Trump administration’s claim that every immigrant it detains who has previously entered the U.S. without inspection, even if they have resided in the U.S. for decades, is an “arriving alien,” and are not entitled to a bond hearing. This concept — which a federal judge has ruled unlawful — is being applied to everyone, regardless of how long they have lived in the U.S. or how far they are from a border crossing.

“They’re saying, everybody who’s ever entered without inspection, doesn’t matter, if it happened 30 years ago, 40 years ago, it doesn’t matter: you are treated like we just caught you at the border,” Fung said. “ So that was an example of something that we thought was very clear in the law, and created a lot of randomness in the process. They’re doing it to 99 percent of the people that they catch in one of their random profiling raids, when they just go out to the street and they don’t know who you are, they think you seem suspicious, you don’t look the right way, you don’t speak the right words, and then they detain you. And they will hold you, assuming that you have entered without inspection, unless you can prove otherwise. So that’s the strategy: let’s just detain you.”

In November 2025 a federal court in central California ruled the policy unlawful and that all members of the nationwide class of immigrants are eligible for bond hearings. But some Trump appointed immigration judges are ignoring the order.

“Usually they just dismiss it out of hand,” Fung said. “There’s not even a full counter argument. It’s just the judge is given marching orders. They’re not real judges. They’re hired at the pleasure and discretion of the executive branch and the president of the United States, and what we see is either they toe the line or they get fired.”

Fung characterized the chaotic legal climate surrounding immigration as a “flood the zone” strategy.

“It doesn’t matter what the law is,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what good governance is. It doesn’t matter about the merits of an individual case. Throw 10 people in jail, eight of them will give up, and two of them won’t be able to afford an attorney, and great, we got what we wanted, the same outcome: everybody’s deported. They don’t care. It’s just … maximum pressure, and the fear is throughout the immigrant community to the point where I think we’re seeing less people call us for assistance than before, which makes sense, right?”

During the previous Trump administration Fung gave regular presentations to San Gabriel Valley immigrants, advising them of their legal rights and options. In the lead up to the November 2024 election and on through Trump’s second inauguration in January, he noticed an uptick in people requesting help, “Because there was a lot of fear and people wanted to see what their options were and fix their paperwork,” Fung said. “But now they’re too afraid to even call and find out what their options are. I think some people are too afraid to leave the house.”

Over a decade of seeing scores of immigration cases successfully wind their way through the courts, Fung has gained a solid understanding of the law. But the Trump administration’s disregard for norms, in some cases outright willful defiance of settled law, has left him scrambling to be of help.

“Because the nature of these policies are implemented so haphazardly, so randomly, now we’re finding even secretly, it is hard to predict anything that will happen,” Fung said. “And the pace of things is such that you can qualify for one thing, you can apply, and then put yourself in danger by the time ICE makes a decision on your case.”

One of the Trump administration’s most ambiguous new rules involves determining if green card holders, who are lawful permanent residents, have exhibited “anti-Americanism.”

“And of course, they say a part of anti-Americanism will be antisemitism, which they mainly have interpreted as protests against the state of Israel or protesting or commenting in favor of Palestinians,” Fung said.

Setting aside the clear First Amendment concerns with the new “anti-Americanism” rule, the fact that there has been no concrete guidance from the administration as to what constitutes a violation of this policy has further muddied the water for those seeking citizenship. This, Fung said, is by design.

“If you can’t tell somebody if they’re being anti-American for sure or not, and no attorney can really define that for ICE since it hasn’t been defined for us, we can’t really say for sure what that’ll look like in the future,” Fung said. “We just have to use a common sense test. My litmus test has been, what would Marco Rubio do if he found out what you were saying? And it’s a horrible test. It’s not a legal basis for anything. But it’s where we’re at. It’s probably the most practical thing you can do, to see if you’re going to make the administration annoyed or not by your words.”

Fung was asked if this sort of capricious enforcement of federal immigration law is what he signed up for 10 years ago, when he went to work for the Immigration Resource Center of San Gabriel Valley.

“No! What I signed up for was to walk alongside people as they navigated an unfair and byzantine process with very little access to legal resources,” he said. “But I didn’t expect that my own staff would feel threatened. I didn’t expect that our board members would feel like they had to start carrying their passports. I didn’t expect that any of the vitriol and oppression that I’ve seen and known our clients to experience would sort of expand outwards to everybody who was part of their community. But that is what’s happening.”

Still, Fung said he is grateful to be working alongside like-minded, resilient people, adding neither he nor they are thinking of stopping.

“We know this is the moment that we’ve been called to meet,” he said. “But it’s difficult. It is really, really hard emotionally … And in terms of our own personal emotional health, it’s hard to not feel secondary trauma from our clients and feel anxiety for the future. But again, I feel very privileged to be able to choose into the work. I know that everyone we work with on a day-to-day basis doesn’t get that option. It just happens to them. And I’m proud to work alongside people who choose to be here and be in a moment of crisis.”

Fung advised those who may be in danger of being detained by federal immigration agents that they are vulnerable when they are alone, and to be with their community. He also said to make plans for the worst, and most importantly, to document everything.

“Because we have seen the administration lie over and over again about what is happening right in front of our video cameras,” Fung said. “And we know if there wasn’t that video evidence of what had happened to people, from multiple angles, that we would have had a very, very different narrative.

“So we’re telling everybody this is a moment to bear witness, whether you’re a bystander or you’re affected yourself, you have to bear witness together. And if we want the rule of law to prevail, we’re going to have to be able to testify and record and document this for the future.”

More information about the Immigration Resource Center of San Gabriel Valley is at ircsgv.org.