President Donald Trump is bringing his own form of brash showmanship to immigration policy.

Long done in the shadows, Trump’s administration is releasing photos and videos of authorities herding migrants onto C-17s, military planes typically used to transport troops. They’ve detailed arrests of alleged criminals, touted statistics on how many people they’ve detained and barred flights of refugees en route to the United States.

But beyond the highly visible actions, the changes Trump has enacted in the first days of his new term go much deeper: the authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol has been widely expanded, federal agents have been granted new immigration-enforcement powers and arrests are now permitted in once-restricted spaces like churches and schools. Meanwhile, those applying for asylum outside of the U.S. or here under temporary protection face significant new hurdles.

All together, the moves signal a significant shift in U.S. policy as Trump begins what he promised will be the biggest mass deportation in the nation’s history.

The administration has immediately delivered on the “shock and awe” it promised, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

“The actions have changed public conversations around immigration and intensified already-heightened fears within immigrant communities,” said Meissner, a former commissioner of the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service. “The question now is the degree to which these and expected further sweeping changes can be sustained, adequately resourced, and withstand legal challenges that are mounting against them.”

One of the central tenets of Trump’s plans, restricting birthright citizenship, was temporarily put on hold when a judge in Seattle called the executive order signed on day one of his presidency “blatantly unconstitutional.” The Justice Department released a statement saying it “will vigorously defend” the order, while his top Justice Department official, Emil Bove, warned prosecutors they had to comply with Trump’s agenda.

As of Thursday, ICE had made more than 500 arrests, including a group of more than 300 people they described as criminal immigrants, though the agency didn’t clarify if those people had all been convicted of a crime.

On Friday, Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, shared an image on X that showed a group of men in ankle shackles on an airport tarmac heading toward a ramp into a military aircraft. Bloomberg News reported that the administration was sending deportees to Guatemala and El Salvador.

ICE highlighted the arrests of several men, most from Central America or Mexico, convicted of serious crimes in the U.S., according to a senior administration official. Their convictions included assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery, attempted murder and rape, the official said.

“The deportation is going very well,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he was landing in North Carolina on Friday. “We’re getting the bad, hard criminals out. These are murderers. These are people that have been as bad as you get, as bad as anybody you’ve seen. We’re taking them out first.”

Included in the arrests were at least 165 noncriminals, according to ICE.

In Newark, New Jersey, Democratic leaders said one business there had been raided Thursday and that a U.S. military veteran was initially detained. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka blasted the raids, saying the city “will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized.”

Chicago public school officials claimed they turned away ICE agents at one school Friday and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned the incident. An ICE spokesman told Axios that it was not their personnel.

Trump has vowed to target an estimated 11 million people who are in the country illegally. He’s ordered a new deployment of military troops to the border to help block migrants from crossing illegally. The Defense Department said at least four military planes will also be used to help carry out deportations of about 5,000 detained migrants from El Paso, Texas, and San Diego.

The Trump administration also said it was expanding its use of a fast-track deportation authority that allows the removal of migrants in the country for two years without first seeing an immigration judge. Previously the expedited removal process was confined for foreigners caught within 100 miles of the border and two weeks after crossing the border, unless they asked for asylum or other protections.

The deportation flights meanwhile drew criticism from groups who monitor migrant flights. Thomas Cartwright, a refugee advocate with Witness at the Border, called the pictures posted by Leavitt “theater of the absurd” given that military cargo planes carry fewer people than the regular charter flights that DHS has used for several years. Cartwright said the U.S. had already been sending an average of 10 deportation flights per week to Guatemala.

“The only thing new about this is subjecting people to transport on a cargo plane rather than charter and the LOWER number of people on the plane,” Cartwright wrote on X.

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(With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron.)

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