Federal Judge Disqualifies Trump-Backed Prosecutor in Los Angeles

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A federal judge ruled that Bill Essayli, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, is not lawfully serving in his role. The ruling creates leadership uncertainty in the Central District of California, the nation’s largest judicial district. While Essayli can remain as the office’s top deputy, the judge expressed concern about the Department of Justice’s attempts to circumvent congressional approval for federal prosecutors.

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The court ruled that Bill Essayli had been acting “unlawfully” as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles but that he could stay on as the office’s top deputy for now.

Oct. 28, 2025

A federal judge ruled that Bill Essayli “is not lawfully serving as acting United States Attorney” and “cannot continue to perform any role”Mario Tama/Getty Images

A federal judge disqualified the United States Attorney in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the latest rebuke to the Trump administration’s attempts to circumvent congressional approval for federal prosecutors.

The ruling creates leadership uncertainty in the nation’s largest judicial district, the Central District of California, which serves seven counties in the Los Angeles area. The order was issued by Judge J. Michael Seabright of the Federal District Court in Hawaii, who ruled that the Trump appointee, Bill Essayli, “is not lawfully serving as acting United States Attorney” and “cannot continue to perform any role” that job entails.

But it was unclear what the practical effect of his order would be, since the judge also allowed Mr. Essayli to revert to the role of the office’s top deputy, as the first assistant United States attorney.

The judge, an appointee of George W. Bush, said he shared concerns expressed by lawyers who had challenged Mr. Essayli’s status that the result was “little remedy at all” and agreed that the Department of Justice was effectively circumventing the intent of the law. But he said he was constrained “to apply the statutes as written.”

The judge also did not dismiss the three criminal cases being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office in which defense lawyers had argued that Mr. Essayli lacked legal standing to prosecute. And while Mr. Essayli could not supervise the cases as the head of the office, the judge ruled, he could supervise them as the office’s top deputy.

A spokesman for Mr. Essayli could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Trump administration’s strategy of forgoing congressional approval has clouded the legitimacy of several prominent regional offices of the Department of Justice. Three federal judges have now rejected attempts by the administration to retain federal prosecutors on an “acting” basis, without Senate or judicial confirmation, after their initial 120-day terms expired. A fourth challenge was brought last week by James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who has asserted in court filings that Lindsey Halligan, a prosecutor Mr. Trump put in place in Virginia, was improperly appointed. 

And California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office confirmed on Tuesday that the governor had hired one of the federal prosecutors purged by the Trump administration, Michele Beckwith, the former acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento.

Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from handling four cases, saying that she was “not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney” and that her involvement in cases “would be unlawful.” Challenges have since arisen in other federal cases brought in that state. In August, a different judge ruled that Alina Habba, a former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, had been serving as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney without legal authority. Both decisions have been appealed.

Mr. Essayli and Ms. Chattah had initially been appointed “interim” U.S. attorneys. Interim appointments expire after 120 days, but in late July, the Trump administration extended their terms by naming them both acting U.S. attorneys. Permanent U.S. attorney appointments typically require approval either by the U.S. Senate or by federal judges in the affected district.

In a hearing on Mr. Essayli’s situation in Los Angeles earlier this month, lawyers debated the fine points of laws dictating the rules for appointments, which are not always straightforward. Alexander Robbins, an assistant U.S. attorney, argued that “it’s pretty clear that Mr. Essayli legitimately works here, like I do and like all the other A.U.S.A.s in this office.”

Public defenders in Nevada and California have led the challenges but have not discussed them publicly. But they have been joined by other lawyers who have.

“They are trying to get around congressional oversight,” Mark Windsor, one of the private lawyers challenging Mr. Essayli’s appointment on behalf of a client, said during the hearing in Los Angeles. “I don’t think that this court can avoid the conclusion that this really is an intentional, knowing, deliberate attempt to circumvent some of the key safeguards within our Constitution and that it deserves the most extreme remedy that this court can fashion in order to deter that conduct,” he added.

The case is likely to be appealed along with the others. In remarks during the court hearing, Judge Seabright said that “no matter what” he ruled, the case would inevitably end up before a higher court.

Mr. Essayli, a former state assemblyman who once worked as an assistant U.S. attorney, is a Trump ally who has been far more outspoken on political issues than have many of his predecessors. In social media posts, he has criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, both Democrats. In an appearance on Fox News, he said that many state lawmakers appeared to have “a disease in the mind” and “want soft-on-crime policies.”

He ramped up an investigation of California high school sports after a transgender girl qualified for three events at the state track and field championships.

And he has played a high-profile role in the administration’s response to protests surrounding immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. In June, after a prominent union leader was injured during an arrest while protesting the raids, Mr. Essayli said, “I don’t care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted.”

Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics. 

 

ICE detains British journalist after criticism of Israel on US tour

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“British journalist Sami Hamdi was detained by ICE at San Francisco International Airport, reportedly due to his criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza during a US speaking tour. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the detention as an affront to free speech, while Trump ally Laura Loomer took credit for the action. This incident follows a pattern of ICE detaining immigrants over pro-Palestinian views, despite a federal judge ruling the policy unconstitutional.

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Trump ally Laura Loomer took credit for Sami Hamdi’s detainment in move denounced as ‘affront to free speech’

Michael Sainato

Sami Hamdi, speaks at the 17th Palestine Convention in Tinley Park, Illinois, on 30 November 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

British journalist Sami Hamdi was reportedly detained on Sunday morning by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) says that action is apparent retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US.

A statement from Cair said it was “a blatant affront to free speech” to detain Hamdi for criticizing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza while he engaged on a speaking tour in the US. A Trump administration official added in a separate statement that Hamdi is facing deportation.

“Our attorneys and partners are working to address this injustice,” Cair’s statement said. The statement also called on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “to immediately account for and release Mr Hamdi”, saying his only “‘crime’ is criticizing a foreign government” that Cair accused of having “committed genocide”.

The press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote of Hamdi in a social media post: “This individual’s visa was revoked, and he is in ICE custody pending removal”.

McLaughlin’s post also said: “Those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country.”

During his tour, Hamdi spoke on Saturday at the annual gala for Cair’s chapter in Sacramento. He was expected to speak on Sunday at the gala for the Florida chapter of Cair.

McLaughlin’s post about Hamdi’s detention was shared by Trump administration ally Laura Loomer, who took credit for his being taken into custody.

Loomer, who has called herself a “white advocate” and a “proud Islamophobe”, has often peddled conspiracy theories such as endorsing claims that the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 were an “inside job”.

In 2018, she infamously chained herself to Twitter’s headquarters in New York City in protest of her account being banned. Billionaire businessman Elon Musk reinstated her account after he bought the social media platform in 2022.

“As a direct result of … my relentless pressure on the [state department] and Department of Homeland Security, US officials have now moved to take action against Hamdi’s visa status, and his continued presence in this country,” Loomer posted on social media.

Hamdi is the latest of numerous immigrants who have been arrested and deported by ICE over pro-Palestinian views. Earlier in October, journalist Mario Guevara was deported to El Salvador after having been detailed while live streaming the massive, anti-Trump No Kings protest in June.

On 30 September, a federal judge appointed during Ronald Reagan’s presidency ruled the administration’s policy to detain and deport foreign scholars over pro-Palestinian views violates the US constitution and was designed to “intentionally” chill free speech rights.

The ruling is bound to be appealed, possibly all the way to the US supreme court, which is dominated by a conservative supermajority made possible by three Trump appointments. The state department, meanwhile, has said it will continue revoking visas under the policy.“

 

Republican senator calls Trump’s military airstrikes ‘extrajudicial killings’

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“Senator Rand Paul criticized the Trump administration’s military airstrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast, calling them “extrajudicial killings” and arguing that Congress received no information about the strikes. Paul, along with Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Adam Schiff, introduced a war powers resolution to block the strikes, but it failed in the Senate. Trump defended the strikes, stating the administration would be willing to brief lawmakers but saw no need for congressional authorization.

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Rand Paul’s comments come days after president claimed US lawmakers wouldn’t take issue with Venezuelan strikes

Ramon Antonio Vargas

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky speaks during a Senate hearing in Washington DC on 21 May 2024.Photograph: Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s military airtrikes against boats off Venezuela’s coast that the White House claims were being used for drug trafficking are “extrajudicial killings”, said Rand Paul, the president’s fellow Republican and US senator from Kentucky.

Paul’s strong comments on the topic came on Sunday during an interview on Republican-friendly Fox News, three days after Donald Trump publicly claimed he “can’t imagine” federal lawmakers would have “any problem” with the strikes when asked about seeking congressional approval for them.

US forces in recent weeks have carried out at least eight strikes against boats in the Caribbean off Venezuela’s coast, killing about 40 people that the Trump administration has insisted were involved in smuggling drugs.

Speaking with Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream, Paul asserted that Congress has “gotten no information” on the campaign of strikes from Trump’s administration – despite the president claiming the White House would be open to briefing the federal lawmakers about the offensive.

“No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said of the targeted boats or those on board. He argued that the Trump administration’s actions bring to mind the way China and Iran’s repressive governments have previously executed drug smugglers.

“They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public,” Paul contended in his conversation with Bream. “So it’s wrong.”

Paul’s comments separate him from other Republican members of Congress who have spoken in favor of the Trump administration’s offensive near Venezuela, including US House representative Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Senator Cynthia Loomis of Wyoming, as reported by the US news website Semafor.

The Kentucky libertarian joined Democratic US senators Tim Kaine of Virginia and Adam Schiff of California in introducing a war powers resolution that would have blocked the Trump administration’s use of military strikes within or against Venezuela. But the measure failed to win a majority in the Senate.

Trump on Friday told the media that his administration would be willing to brief lawmakers on the strikes but simply saw no reason to seek congressional authorization for them.

“I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK?” Trump said. “We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be – like – dead.”

Paul has had military-related disagreements with Trump before his Sunday interview on Fox.

Trump telegraphed his intent to use the US military to support his administration’s goals of deporting immigrants en masse before he won his second presidency in the 2024 election. After Trump’s second electoral victory but before he retook the Oval Office in January, Paul said he believed using the military in support of deportation was “illegal” and a task better suited for US law enforcement. “It’s a terrible image, and I … oppose that,” Paul said at the time.”

 

The Peril of a White House That Flaunts Its Indifference to the Law

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President Trump’s order for the military to kill individuals suspected of drug smuggling is being called illegal by legal experts. The administration claims these actions are lawful under “self-defense” and “armed conflict,” but has not provided a legal argument to support this claim. This lack of transparency and legal justification raises concerns about the erosion of the rule of law and the potential for future administrations to exploit this power.

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The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs.

Oct. 24, 2025

Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.

A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have been murders — regardless of whether the 43 people blown apart, burned alive or drowned in 10 strikes so far were indeed running drugs.

The administration insists that the killings are lawful, invoking legal terms like “self-defense” and “armed conflict.” But it has offered no legal argument explaining how to bridge the conceptual gap between drug trafficking and associated crimes, as serious as they are, and the kind of armed attack to which those terms can legitimately apply.

The irreversible gravity of killing, coupled with the lack of a substantive legal justification, is bringing into sharper view a structural weakness of law as a check on the American presidency.

It is becoming clearer than ever that the rule of law in the White House has depended chiefly on norms — on government lawyers willing to raise objections when merited and to resign in protest if ignored, and on presidents who want to appear law-abiding. This is especially true in an era when party loyalty has defanged the threat of impeachment by Congress, and after the Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed with official powers.

Every modern president has occasionally taken some aggressive policy step based on a stretched or disputed legal interpretation. But in the past, they and their aides made a point to develop substantive legal theories and to meet public and congressional expectations to explain why they thought their actions were lawful, even if not everyone agreed.

Around 15 years ago, intense legal controversy surrounded President Barack Obama’s drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda militants in ungoverned places where the United States did not have ground troops, like Yemen and tribal Pakistan. Those included the killing of a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was deemed an operational terrorist leader whose capture was infeasible.

Behind the scenes, Obama administration lawyers wrestled with the scope and limits of how the congressionally authorized armed conflict against Al Qaeda could apply to such scenarios. They developed lengthy and detailed memosciting Supreme Court precedents, and systematically worked through issues of domestic and international law.

The details of its legal rationale became known to Congress and the public not only through unauthorized disclosures and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, but also because the administration delivered speeches and produced a white paper summarizing its reasoning, which it gave to Congress.

Today, the Trump administration is mostly behaving with audacious transparency about its boat attacks. Mr. Trump has posted surveillance videos of the deadly strikes, talked with relish about how “it is violent and it is very — it’s amazing, the weaponry,” and even acknowledged that he had authorized the C.I.A. to take covert actions in Venezuela.

But administration officials have clammed up when asked for the legal analysis to support their assertion that there is a legal state of armed conflict that makes the killings lawful.

Even in closed-door congressional briefings, according to people familiar with them, officials have provided no detailed legal answers. They are said to have cited drug overdose deaths of Americans, and stated that Mr. Trump decided the country was in an armed conflict with drug cartels. They are also said to have pointed to the part of the Constitution that makes the president the commander in chief of the armed forces, without much further elaboration.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former top Justice Department lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s actions demonstrated an indifference to law that threatened to hollow it out.

“Nixon tried to keep his criminality secret, and the Bush administration tried to keep the torture secret, and that secrecy acknowledged the norm that these things were wrong,” Professor Goldsmith said. “Trump, as he often does when he is breaking law or norms, is acting publicly and without shame or unease. This is a very successful way to destroy the efficacy of law and norms.”

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that Mr. Trump promised during the campaign to take on drug cartels whose actions “resulted in the needless deaths of innocent Americans.” She suggested his “unprecedented action” would continue.

“All of these decisive strikes have been against designated narcoterrorists, as affirmed by U.S. intelligence, bringing deadly poison to our shores, and the president will continue to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” she said.

A Legal Vacuum

A U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer docked in Ponce, Puerto Rico, earlier this month.Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters

In peacetime, targeting civilians — even suspected criminals — who pose no threat of imminent violence is considered murder. In an armed conflict, it is a war crime. International law accepted by the U.S. military says that, as do U.S. laws.

By asserting that he can have the military kill people suspected of drug trafficking as if they are enemy soldiers on a battlefield, Mr. Trump is blurring a line between enforcing the law and waging a war.

The United States has long dealt with maritime smuggling by using the Coast Guard, sometimes assisted by the Navy, to intercept boats and, if illicit cargo is found, to arrest their crews. Similarly, the police arrest people they believe are dealing drugs; it would be considered murder to instead summarily gun such suspects down in the street. And even if a person accused of drug trafficking pleads guilty or is convicted at trial, the penalty is prison — not execution.

Since Sept. 2, however, the military, on Mr. Trump’s orders, has carried out 10 strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Colombia. Mr. Trump has asserted that each boat carried drugs that would have killed 25,000 Americans, and on behalf of “narco-terrorists,” or cartels his team has designated as terrorist organizations.

It is increasingly difficult to speak plainly about the administration’s actions without dissecting layers of rhetoric that can create a misleading impression.

In all, about 80,000 American drug users died last year by overdosing, down from about 110,000 in 2023. The drug that has caused a surge in such deathsover the past decade is fentanyl, which comes from labs in Mexico. South America, the origin of the boats the Trump administration has been attacking, instead produces cocaine.

And terrorists, by definition, are trying to advance some ideological or religious cause. Drug cartels, by contrast, seek to profit from an illicit consumer product. In any case, the law that enables the executive branch to designate a group as terrorists triggers the power to freeze its assets and criminalize providing support to it, not to kill people suspected of membership.

These factual distinctions raise questions about the two legal terms the administration has invoked to say that its killings are lawful rather than murders: “self-defense” and “armed conflict.”

To legally kill someone in self-defense, the deadly force must be necessary to prevent an imminent threat of death or significant injury. In an armed conflict, though, one can legally kill someone based on the person’s status as a member of the enemy force, even if that person poses no immediate threat. But for an armed conflict to exist, there must be a certain intensity and duration of combat.

Why is carrying drugs on a speedboat 1,500 miles from Florida, the kind of vessel the Coast Guard and Navy could easily seize, an imminent threat of death? Why is trafficking cocaine — not fentanyl — an armed attack on the United States? Why does crewing a drug-running boat make someone a targetable combatant rather than a criminal?

What is the theory for transmuting acts of crime into acts of war?

Legal deliberations inside the executive branch, according to officials familiar with the matter, have been closely held and largely limited to political appointees. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — which Mr. Trump sidelined for most of the year until appointing an official to lead it in August as preparations for the attacks ramped up — has produced a memo apparently blessing the campaign. But the administration has not described its analysis.

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, disputed the premise of this article. The administration has, in fact, publicly laid out its legal theory, the official said, pointing to a recent notice to Congress about one of the boat attacks.

The notice lays out a policy argument for attacking cartels, portraying them as dangerous groups that are “directly” causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year. And it states that Mr. Trump has “determined” that their actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States” and that the country is in a formal “armed conflict” with them.

But even putting aside the key factual discrepancy between fentanyl and cocaine for overdose deaths, the notice contains no legal theory. It does not mention international and domestic laws governing force. It does not cite court precedents and analyze how they might apply. It offers no explanation for how Mr. Trump could legitimately “determine” that trafficking drugs is legally an armed attack, giving him the power to lawfully order killings in response.

Even if the Justice Department memo that somehow blesses the killings lacks much actual legal analysis and even if a future administration rescinds it, its existence essentially forecloses any prospect of future prosecutions. It is hard to prove someone intentionally committed a crime when the Justice Department itself said at the time that the action was lawful.

Two decades ago, Professor Goldsmith took over the Office of Legal Counsel and withdrew memos issued under the Bush administration that blessed the C.I.A.’s torture program. Reflecting on that period in a memoir, he called such memos get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Short-Circuiting Analysis

Mr. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have used the authority of the administration to exert pressure on the decisions of executive branch lawyers.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The silence about what legal theory can support Mr. Trump’s assertion that suspected drug smugglers are lawful military targets as “combatants” in an armed conflict dovetails with a growing pattern in his administration’s assertions of executive power.

The administration has found a two-part hack to the system in which executive branch lawyers are supposed to independently determine the legal boundaries within which policymakers may act.

The first is that Mr. Trump has told executive branch lawyers that they may not question any legal judgment that he — or Attorney General Pam Bondi, subject to his “supervision and control” — already decided. “The president and the attorney general’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties,” Mr. Trump declared in a February executive order.

The second is that Mr. Trump has been declaring that as president, he has determined that the factual and legal scenarios exist that are necessary for him to exercise various extraordinary powers.

The two tactics combined create a gigantic loophole. Mr. Trump is able to dictate his own factual and legal realities, and executive branch lawyers who want to keep their jobs must treat them as settled. The result is that Mr. Trump can order agencies to take actions to which independent-minded lawyers might have raised legal objections.

On his first day in office in January, Mr. Trump signed an order that nullified a law the Supreme Court had just unanimously upheld that banned TikTok from operating in the United States. When letters the Justice Department sent to tech companies assuring them that they could lawfully violate the statute became public in July, they explained only that Mr. Trump had “determined” that the law interfered with his constitutional duties.

Even when Mr. Trump’s “determinations” reach the courts, the administration has argued that judges must defer to Mr. Trump’s assertions, too.

For example, Mr. Trump is trying to use a wartime deportation law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process — taking planeloads of them to a notorious Salvadoran prison — based on his assertion that Venezuela’s government is directing a gang to invade the United States.

The U.S. intelligence community believes the gang is not, in fact, controlled by Venezuela’s government, and lower-court judges have rejected his finding that illegal immigration counts as an “invasion.” But the administration has faulted those judges for having “failed to defer to the president’s determinations,” and a full appeals court has decided to rehear the case.

Mr. Trump’s attempts to deploy troops under federal control into Democratic-run cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Chicago also turn on his finding, rejected by lower-court judges, that protests of his immigration crackdown were out of control. One Trump-appointed judge wrote, “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

Two appeals court panels have overturned the rulings about Los Angeles and Portland, saying greater deference was required. A third panel upheld the ruling about Chicago, but the administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene, insisting that courts may not “review the president’s judgment at all.”

Politically appointed officials have often been ready to devise creative legal theories that allow presidents to do what they want, especially when it comes to war powers. Many critics, for example, said that was the Obama administration’s approach in defending his unilateral decision to have the United States participate in NATO’s 2011 air war in Libya.

Still, the very act of searching for a legal theory and developing an argument can shape deliberations about what a president chooses to do. And sometimes presidents have restrained themselves because of legal objections, as when Mr. Obama relinquished his high-profile vow to close the prison at Guantánamo because of a law barring him from bringing detainees to the United States.

Based on the information now available, Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired judge advocate general officer who served as the Army’s senior law-of-war adviser and now teaches criminal and military law at Texas Tech University, said that the United States was not in an armed conflict with drug cartels, notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s “determination.”

Professor Corn said he believed the killings were illegal, and expressed concern about “the impact on the morality of the war fighters who have to carry out the orders.”

“The men and women who volunteered to serve this nation and engage in the most morally challenging conduct imaginable — killing someone who is not immediately threatening you — have a right to know the nation will not order them to engage in that deadly endeavor unless it is genuinely justified both legally and morally,” he said. “The service members who conduct attacks have to live the rest of their lives with the memory.”

  

Being Latino in the United States Should Not Be a Crime

Oct. 27, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET

Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

By The Editorial Board

“The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has become a campaign of discrimination against Latinos. Federal agents are rounding uppeople with brown skin, catching both U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in their dragnet. Some Latinos are now afraid to speak Spanish or listen to Spanish music in public. Some are missing Mass and staying home on Sundays, or asking friends to pick up their children from school. American citizens are living in fear of a government that is sworn to protect their liberties and keep them safe.

They have reason to fear. In President Trump’s anti-immigration blitz, federal agents have repeatedly violated civil liberties and humiliated people. Masked officials have shattered car windows and pulled out drivers, leaving children sobbing in back seats. In the middle of the night in Chicago, agents with rifles swarmed an apartment building, broke down doors and dragged people from their homes in handcuffs. Dozens of those taken away were U.S. citizens. Nationwide, immigration officials have detained more than 170 American citizens, including 20 held for more than 24 hours without the ability to make a phone call, ProPublica reported.

These actions are undermining the public trust that is necessary for effective enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. The behavior of federal agents is provoking an angry backlash in many of the communities that Mr. Trump claims he is trying to help. If all of this is supposed to convey a sense of renewed law and order, it is not working.

As is typical for Mr. Trump, he has identified a real problem — illegal immigration — but responded with a destructive solution. For decades, the United States tolerated a level of illegal immigration that fostered a sense of lawlessness at the border and frustrated many Americans, including many Latinos. The Biden administration’s porous policies worsened the situation, making possible the largest immigration surge in American history, with most of the arrivals lacking legal permission to enter the country. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to reverse those policies, and he has an electoral mandate to do so. At the border, he has succeeded at reducing illegal entries to the lowest levels in decades.

Yet he does not have a mandate to treat people cruelly or to break the law himself. Polls show that most Americans disapprove of his handling of the issue. The country does not need to choose between the chaos of the Biden approach and the chaos of the Trump approach. The best solution remains a comprehensive law that secures the border, deters future illegal entries, expands legal immigration and provides a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized migrants who have made their lives in the United States and are otherwise law-abiding members of society. Short of that — and Congress shows no signs of passing such a law — Mr. Trump can address illegal immigration in ways that are both more humane and effective. This country needs to enforce its laws without terrorizing innocent Americans and abandoning its values.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. 

Of the many problems with Trump immigration policies, two themes stand out: the brutality toward immigrants who are here illegally and the unfairness toward citizens and legal immigrants.

People who entered this country illegally often did so at great risk to themselves, seeking a better life in the United States. They violated the law, yes, but the response should be proportional to their crimes. It should be both firm and humane. Instead, the Trump administration has reveled in harshness. Masked, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have tackled and body slammed people on the streets. Officials have launched raids into homes, destroying people’s property.

In one video, a federal agent said to a group of Latinos, including a U.S. citizen: “You got no rights here. You’re an amigo, brother.” After that encounter, one agent told another, referring to the immigrants, “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.” In another video, an agent yelled “adios” to the concerned wife of a detained migrant before he shoved her into a wall and she collapsed. Other disturbing videos have filled social media.

The tactics violate both the law and human decency. On the legal side, recent court decisions have emphasized that people accused of being here without permission have a constitutional right to some due process. That right is to all of our benefit: If the federal government could simply say that someone is in the country illegally without having to prove the claim, it could deport anyone with impunity. On the human side, a vast majority of these migrants have done nothing worse than come to the country illegally, in search of a better life. Federal agents should respond appropriately, not with the expectation that violence is necessary.

The second problem with the Trump approach is that its breadth inevitably sweeps up U.S. citizens and other legal residents. Federal officials are relying on racial profiling in a country where 20 percent of the population is Latino, most of whom are legal residents or citizens. The administration is able to do so because of Congress’s acquiescence on the topic and a wrongheaded ruling that the Supreme Court issued last month, upholding the use of racial profiling in the raids.

The use of racial discrimination in law enforcement should be an affront to all Americans. Videos show that many federal agents believe that the burden of proof is on Latinos to show they are here legally, not on the government officials who are accusing them of a crime. During a raid in California, officials yanked George Retes, a U.S. citizen who served in Iraq, from his car and held him for three days. Mr. Retes said he had a government ID in his vehicle, but officials did not let him show it to them. Similar treatment befell Javier Ramirez in California, Julio Noriega in Illinois and an unnamed military veteran in New Jersey, among others.

Americans have responded to these problems with protests. As if to prove the protesters’ point, federal agents have reacted with more abuses of power, using tear gas and pepper balls on peaceful demonstrators. Even after a federal judge demanded an end to these practices, they have continued.

Federal agents’ masks exacerbate the problems. Agents with masks know they are more likely to get away with violence and abuses of power because they are anonymous. To the community, masks signal that the government cares more about protecting its agents’ identities than democratic accountability. They create a sense that the government is sending faceless storm troopers to terrorize families.

Despite its aggressiveness, the crackdown has not even been effective at dealing with the millions of people who are in this country without legal permission. The administration is missing its own deportation benchmarks. It is on pace to deport fewer people than the Obama administration did in some years. The Obama administration’s approach made sense. It focused on people who arrived recently and on those who had committed crimes since arriving in this country — and it typically respected people’s rights to due process. It did not resort to masked agents and violent raids.

What separates democracy from authoritarianism, the rule of law from lawlessness and a decent society from an indecent one is not just the goal but the process. The government can, and should, reduce illegal immigration, but it should do so in a way that upholds American ideals.

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.”