The Homefront Report: The Trump Effect Is Taking Credit for the Rain

Immigration courts speed-run deportation, a military family discovers the limits of service, and the president claims ownership of a crime decline already in progress.

The Trump administration has found a way to make deportation more efficient: make the courts less judicial. Across the country, immigration judges are being handed mass hearings containing 100 to 200 cases at once. Court dates are being moved forward with little warning, notices are mailed in English to people who may not speak it, and those who fail to appear, sometimes because they never knew they were expected, can be ordered deported without ever presenting their case. Which is not justice moving quickly; it’s more like an assembly line with a judge stationed at the end.

Things are moving here on the Homefront, too, although movement in our house should never be confused with efficiency. After several days without water, some of our potted plants were looking deeply unhappy. We deadheaded them, gave them a good drink, and moved them into the ground, where we are hoping stronger roots and steadier care will help nurse them back to health. Plants are refreshingly honest. When something’s wrong, they simply wilt; they don’t issue a press release insisting their leaves have never been perkier. They show you what they need, and if you’re paying attention, you adjust.

Yesterday, I was not especially good at adjusting. It was one of those days when I couldn’t seem to get anywhere. Every mess I cleaned regenerated before I had finished cleaning it. I spent two hours scrubbing the bathroom, only for the kids to transform it into a colorful, fragrant bath-bomb disaster zone. I scrubbed the floors, only for the children to cover them in toys and the dog to autograph them with muddy paws. I started a load of laundry and returned to find the dirty basket full again. Apparently, the laundry has developed its own reproductive system and no longer requires human involvement.

All of this is ordinary. It’s the daily choreography of raising children, living with animals, maintaining a home, and attempting to keep everyone clothed, fed, relatively clean, and emotionally intact. Parents everywhere perform this dance, often while stepping on toy cars and wondering why every towel they own is suddenly wet.

Usually, I can laugh about it. Yesterday, I couldn’t. There were too many messes, too many interruptions, and too many emotions. My children had emotions, my husband had emotions, and I had emotions about everyone else’s emotions. My ADHD brain and heart can hold an astonishing amount until, suddenly, they just cannot hold one more bath bomb.

I wanted to lie down and pretend the world was an empty void where no one needed a snack, no one had hurt feelings, and the laundry basket had finally accepted death. Unfortunately, disappearing into the void is difficult when you have a family. Someone will eventually find you and ask where the clean socks are.

So I have to do the grown-up thing. I have to learn how to deal with these feelings, or at least keep trying. I have to recognize when I’m overwhelmed, admit when I’m wrong, adapt my behavior for the greater good, and accept that some things can’t be controlled. I’m not always particularly good at any of this, but I want my children to become better equipped to handle their own difficult days than I sometimes feel equipped to handle mine. That means showing them that growth begins with honesty.

You have to notice when something is wilting, and admit when your approach isn’t working. You have to change what you can, accept what you can’t, and never stop loving the people who are learning beside you. This is a lesson I expect to keep learning for the rest of my life, which is more than I can say for the administration.

Instead of examining whether its deportation campaign is causing injustice, the administration has begun reshaping the courts to produce deportations faster. The Executive Office for Immigration Review exists within the Justice Department rather than the independent judicial branch, which gives the president’s administration substantial power over the judges, policies, and procedures controlling immigration cases.

More than 100 immigration judges have reportedly been fired, resigned, or retired since Trump returned to office. Many of their replacements have come from immigration enforcement backgrounds. The Justice Department has even recruited applicants with advertisements inviting them to become “deportation judges,” which rather neatly announces the desired verdict before anyone has heard the case.

The new “mega master” hearings can place as many as 200 cases before a single judge in one session. Researchers found that the amount of warning people receive can dramatically change the outcome. In one Kansas City hearing, 93 people were given a median of no more than 15 days’ notice, and fifty-six were ordered deported in their absence. In another hearing, 96 people had a median of 196 days to prepare, and only nine received deportation orders for failing to appear. The difference wasn’t the law, it was whether people had a reasonable opportunity to show up.

In June, immigration judges issued 53,808 deportation orders against people who were not present, a majority of all completed cases that month. More than 13,000 came from mass hearings where the median notice period was 45 days or less. Compared with June 2024, the number of people ordered deported in absentia increased by nearly 184 percent.

Once the government issues one of these orders, correcting an error can require a complicated motion, an attorney, supporting evidence, and a $1,065 filing fee. A person who never received notice may therefore have to spend money they don’t possess proving that they didn’t know about a hearing they never attended. This is apparently what passes for efficiency when the desired product is deportation.

The machinery nearly carried Maisa Lopes Eliaser all the way to Brazil. Eliaser is married to Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo, an active-duty soldier stationed in Louisiana. She had overstayed a tourist visa and received a deportation order, but her husband’s military service once might have helped the family pursue protection while resolving her immigration status. The Trump administration rolled back protections for military families, and Eliaser was detained in July.

She was already aboard a deportation flight when ICE removed her from the plane and returned her to Louisiana. She was later released after the Associated Press reported on her case, members of Congress began investigating the detention of military families, advocates applied pressure, and Senator Mark Kelly intervened directly. The problem wasn’t corrected because the system identified an injustice. It was corrected because the injustice became embarrassing.

Her husband serves the United States, but that was apparently not enough to keep his family together. He also needed national news coverage, congressional attention, an advocacy organization, and a United States senator willing to make a phone call.

The administration wants military families celebrated in speeches and available for photographs. Protecting them when the deportation machine reaches their front door appears to be an optional service.

Meanwhile, the same administration has discovered a set of government statistics it likes very much. New FBI figures show violent crime fell 9.3 percent in 2025. Homicides dropped 18.1 percent, bringing the national homicide rate to 4.1 per 100,000 people, its lowest level since 1956. Robbery fell 18.5 percent, property crime dropped 12.4 percent, and motor vehicle theft declined by nearly 23 percent.

This is genuinely good news. It’s also the continuation of a decline that began in 2022, three years before Trump returned to office. Crime researchers have cautioned that there is no single established explanation for the improvement. The decline has occurred across cities with different political leadership, policing strategies, economic conditions, and local policies.

Trump has nevertheless declared it the “Trump effect.” He walked into a garden watered by thousands of police officers, community organizations, violence-prevention workers, local officials, schools, families, and social forces researchers are still trying to understand. He spotted new growth and announced that he had invented rain.

For years, he described the United States as a crime-ridden wasteland where lawless cities were being consumed by violence. Now that the statistics show crime falling to historic lows, he would like everyone to know that the country was saved the moment he entered the room. This is the Trump effect in its purest form: inherit someone else’s progress, attach your name to it, and demand applause before anyone checks the planting date.

At home, we’re trying something different. When the plants wilt, we don’t accuse them of disloyalty. We look at the soil, change their conditions, and give them what they need. When I become overwhelmed, I can’t simply declare that I am handling everything beautifully and demand that my family recognize the historic decline in household chaos. I have to be honest about where I am, recognize what went wrong, and try again.

Some days, the floors will stay muddy, the laundry basket will refill, and the children will turn a clean bathroom into a fizzy purple crime scene before the bleach has dried. Some things just cannot be controlled.

But we can control whether we listen, admit when we’re wrong, and adapt when something isn’t working. We can learn how to care for one another without treating vulnerability as failure, and most importantly, we can continue loving each other through the mess. I won’t always get it right, neither will my children, and that’s why the lesson is important.

Growth doesn’t come from pretending everything is already perfect. It comes from recognizing what’s wilting, accepting responsibility for what belongs to us, and having enough humility to change. The plants understand this, the children are learning it, and I’m learning it. The administration remains extremely confident that it has nothing left to learn.