Illegal migrants are losing out on beach vacations and picnics because of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal migration, according to hand-wringing reports in pro-migration media outlets.
“A group of Latino friends and their families had a tradition they repeated every summer: traveling in a caravan to a North Carolina beach, renting a large house, sharing expenses, enjoying the ocean and cooking together,” said an “8 agosto, 2026” report in EnlaceLatinonc.org, which tried to hide the migrants’ illegal status.
“But this year, they decided to stay home” because they are illegal migrants, the report lamented, as it broadcast complaints from some of the 15 million illegal migrants in the United States:
“We only visit people we know. We have a cookout or some kind of meal at home, organize games to have fun for a while and forget everything that is happening. We laugh, tell jokes, and that’s how we pass the time,” an [illegal] immigrant woman said.
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“We try to organize things at home with the children,” one person responded. Another said they try to spend time with their family without going out. One mother said her children know that the park is no longer an option.
On August 9, ICE detained a group of illegals at a well-known picnic spot in North Carolina, complained The19thNews.com:
Going to Wilson Creek in the Pisgah National Forest is something of a Sunday routine for many Latino families in this corner of the Appalachian Mountains. On a recent Sunday, [Venezuelan illegal migrant] Argenis Eduardo Torres Rosales joined other parents and children for a day outdoors.
While they swam and picnicked on the rocks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents set up a checkpoint in Caldwell County, North Carolina, on the narrow road that was the only way in and out of the creek. Rosales was sitting in his car when the agents approached him, his aunt said; according to an advocate, they had been stopping people and asking them for their citizenship status.
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By late afternoon, Rosales and 12 others had been detained and separated from their families, including a father whose wife and children were stranded on the side of the road with no signal in the forest because she didn’t have a driver’s license. As far as anyone could remember, this was the first-ever ICE raid in a national forest in North Carolina. It has since become a deterrent to immigrant families who were already underrepresented among visitors to national parks.
The two articles are extreme examples within the flood of sob stories produced by pro-migration media outlets since Trump’s November 2024 win. Unsurprisingly, neither article mentioned the huge price that Americans pay for having a population of illegal migrants in their nation. These prices include lower wages, inflation, higher housing costs, as well as the damage and costs of additional crime. As predicted, wages are rising for ordinary Americans amid the deportations.
ICE officials, however, are also under White House pressure to minimize the economic shock to investors in the resort industry, who gain from illegal-migrant staff, contractors, and visitors. Pro-American groups say the Department of Homeland Security needs to dramatically accelerate deportations. In contrast, industry groups say the White House should agree to an amnesty bill that also creates a huge annual inflow of wage-cutting legalized workers.
Many migrants are staying indoors to avoid being arrested, according to a 2025 survey by KFF and The New York Times:
27 percent of immigrants said they or a family member have avoided traveling this year due to concerns about drawing attention to someone’s immigration status. The share of likely undocumented immigrants who say this is even higher, with 63 percent saying they have done this. Avoiding travel is something even a third (32 percent) of immigrants who are lawfully present and a fifth (18 percent) of naturalized citizens say they are doing.
Migrants have been arrested on their way to Disney World and leaving Las Vegas, often at airports where ICE can quietly check for people who have overstayed their visas.
The arrests have provided an excuse for environmental activists to join the Democratic Party’s campaign against immigration enforcement.
“Every child torn from nature by immigration terror is a future environmental champion we lose,” Kim Bailey, President and CEO of Justice Outside, claimed in June 2025. She explained:
Climate justice requires environmental leaders from every community. When we deny young people of color access to nature and environmental learning, we undermine the diverse leadership our movement desperately needs. Immigration raids that terrorize families destroy this work and threaten environmental justice.
ICE has also detained illegals who were working at Martha’s Vineyard, a vacation island in Massachusetts, New York’s Lake Placid, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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