As the Trump administration ramps up its crackdown on illegal immigrants, the wave of enforcement raids and deportations is raising cries of protest from an unexpected constituency — animal lovers. 

“ICE is not just tearing families apart but pets are being left behind!!” one TikTok user says in a now-viral video. The young woman directs her camera at two German shepherds sitting on a sun-soaked sidewalk with no collars — or owners — in sight. “Because of all these deportations the dogs are by themselves,” she says. “That’s so f—ing sad.” 

The woman behind the camera offers no evidence that the dogs’ owners were in fact arrested or deported, though she says in the caption of her video that the pooches “were gone” when she came back to check on them.

Still, the video racked up hundreds of thousands of views and drew scores of outraged dog lovers to the comments section. “Can ICE be sued for animal cruelty?” one user asks. “Many dogs will be left questioning when their favorite humans will be back,” another laments. Both comments received thousands of likes. 

Such worries have been building for months. As early as January, a news outlet geared toward Latino immigrants in North Carolina, Enlace Latino, published an article titled: “How can I plan for my pets’ future if I am detained or deported?”

The article was published just seven days after President Trump took office and nine days after Mr. Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, vowed to “take the handcuffs off ICE” and stage “big raids all across the country.” 

The issue grew more pressing over the summer as the ICE operations intensified at the instruction of a top White House aide, Stephen Miller, who raised the agency’s daily arrest target to 3,000.

In Los Angeles, which saw a spike in ICE raids and deportations beginning in June, at least 15 dogs were surrendered to animal shelters across the city due to arrests that occurred between June 10 and July 4, according to the county’s Department of Animal Care and Control.

Sixteen miles south of downtown Los Angeles, at Carson Animal Care Center, employees reported that at least two pets — including a 2-year-old pug-beagle mix named Coco and a Labrador retriever mix of the same age named Bruce — were brought in after their families ran afoul of ICE. 

“It’s a very emotional time,” one of the center’s employees told NBC Los Angeles. “Families are crying and they’re having a hard time letting go.”

Up in Thousand Oaks, California, an animal shelter this week listed for adoption a 1-year-old Yorkshire Terrier mix named Marzipan. The shelter claims the dog was “tossed out into the streets of Taft, California, along with her four puppies” after being abandoned when her owner returned to Mexico because of “ongoing ICE raids in the area.” 

“Through it all, Marzipan has remained gentle, kind, and full of quiet grace,” Shelter Hope shared alongside a slideshow of images of the brown-eyed pooch. 

While such stories are sure to tug at the public’s heartstrings, the number of furry friends that have been relocated to California shelters because of immigration raids is a tiny fraction of the 500,000 dogs and cats that enter shelters and rescues in the state each year. Across the country, an estimated 5.8 million dogs and cats were brought to shelters in 2024 alone. 

The chief executive officer, Dara Eckart, of a nonprofit, no-kill animal shelter at St. Petersburg, Florida, says her organization, Friends of Strays, has “definitely seen an increase in need in the past four or five months.” Although she can’t draw a direct connection to the heightened immigration enforcement, she  tells the Sun that “ICE raids are hitting thousands of people and, you know, many of these people have pets.” 

Ms. Eckart also blamed the economic climate, at least in part, for the surge in pets needing homes. She says that many people are having to surrender their animals “because they can’t afford to take care of them.” 

With inflation putting pressure on the prices of pet food, vet services, and other supplies, 41 percent of pet owners in 2024 reported they were struggling to pay for their furry friends. The financial pressure led one in four Gen Zers to surrender a pet, according to the same poll.  

The spike in shelter demand has put strain on an already “overloaded” system, Ms. Eckart says. She worries that the country will see an “animal welfare crisis” in the coming months “that will be very difficult to manage.” 

While Friends of Strays has yet to issue a specific protocol for pet owners at risk of deportation, Ms. Eckart advises all animal guardians to “make sure that they have someone close by that can pick them up at the drop of a hat. That’s the best thing they can do to protect their pets.”