On Saturday, as an estimated 5 million people took to the streets in more than 2,000 U.S. cities to protest Donald Trump’s immigration raids and his increasingly monarchical tendencies, a columnist in my local newspaper posed a seemingly simple question: “What’s wrong with enforcing the law?”

It’s a fair question — on the surface. But it overlooks the deeply human consequences of Trump’s approach. To her, the deportation of some 11 million undocumented individuals — including those brought here as children, those with expired visas, those awaiting court decisions, and even those granted temporary humanitarian relief from repressive regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti — is simply a matter of legal compliance. Not a human tragedy. Not a social or economic dilemma. Just paperwork.

She may not realize that 80% of undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for over a decade, that they have American-born children, respect the country’s values and work in vital sectors like agriculture, construction, food processing, manufacturing, hospitality, transportation and domestic services. They are woven into the fabric of the American economy and society.

Still, she insists: “President Trump is now enforcing the law.”

But is he? And at what cost?

This same president was convicted in 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to a sex worker. He has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation. He and his company were found guilty of fraudulent practices involving inflated asset valuations. His legal history — both personal and business-related — is riddled with misconduct. And yet, your columnist Susan Shelley trusts him to uphold justice?

As Financial Times columnist Edward Luce observed, “In less than 200 days of his second term, Trump has trampled more laws and shattered more precedents than any leader in U.S. history. He has profited from cryptocurrency deals abroad, used his office to enrich his family through golf resort agreements, waged political war against major universities and hospitals, defied court orders protecting deportees, and launched and partially resumed an erratic economic war against the world. He has investigated his enemies and stripped them of protections. Trump’s assault on American democratic norms is unprecedented in its scope and speed.”

And yet, none of this seems to matter to his defenders. For them, Trump’s raids are a noble “cleansing” of what he calls “drug dealers, rapists, animals and invaders.” In his view, all 11 million undocumented immigrants are criminals masquerading as human beings.

Fortunately, the American people are pushing back.

The massive protests on No Kings Day, along with new data from four major polling organizations — AP, Quinnipiac, The Washington Post and YouGov — paint a clear picture: the public is not on board. Across 11 of the 12 immigration-related questions in these surveys, a majority of Americans expressed opposition to Trump’s policies.

This moment echoes 1986, when the U.S. faced a similar immigration challenge. The difference? Back then, a Republican president named Ronald Reagan chose compassion over cruelty. He worked with a Democratic Congress to legalize the status of nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan recognized their humanity.

Today, we have a very different Republican president — and a Congress marked more by fear than leadership. Trump is no Reagan. And this time, the moral compass of the nation may lie not in Washington, but in the streets.

Sergio Muñoz Bata previously served as executive editor of La Opinión and was a member of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times.