President Donald Trump wants more than 1,200 deportations each day, says the Washington Post.
The top-down pressure for more deportations co-exists even as his deputies try to schedule hundreds of targeted deportations per day while also minimizing the risk of distressing viral videos — for example, crying women and children outside a school or church — that might reduce public support for deportations.
The Post reported on Sunday:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been directed by Trump officials to aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500, because the president has been disappointed with the results of his mass deportation campaign so far, according to four people with knowledge of the briefings.
The quotas were outlined Saturday in a call with senior ICE officials, who were told that each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets. The four people spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal briefings.
…
Neither ICE nor [border chief Tom] Homan responded to requests for comment. After an earlier version of this article was published, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an email that, “your story is false,” but did not reply when asked for specifics.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced 956 arrests on Sunday.
Trump’s deputies are trying to raise the deportation numbers by directing more federal police to the task, even as they also want to minimize media backlash by first deporting the very unpopular 1.5 million migrants who have been found guilty of crimes or who have been ordered home by judges.
That two-sided strategy has muffled the planned backlash from pro-migration Democrats and their media. For example, a Washington Post reporter got 41 million Twitter views of a crying woman as she was told that she could not cross into the United States — but there was minimal voter pushback.
The blocked woman had earlier traveled from her home country — a great risk and cost — because President Joe Biden’s deputies had improperly but deliberately dangled the hope of legal residence in the United States.
Their careful and gradual deportation strategy may offset Democrats’ effort to paint Trump’s repatriations as chaotic, cruel, and counterproductive.
“It will cause chaos, and that will be bad for local law enforcement to have that type of chaos, where people are afraid to go to their local police officers. … that’s what causes anarchy in societies,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, told CNN on November 18.
RELATED: U.S. Marine Corps Troops Helping to Secure the Southern Border
“They’re talking about rounding up people who are law-abiding, undocumented immigrants in this country, many of whom are working, paying taxes [to state and local governments],” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker told MSNBC.
“Cruelty is the point,” says Douglas Rivlin, the spokesman for America’s Voice, which is backed by the FWD.us investor group.
Pro-migration activists are also provoking ICE officials on their daily work:
Trump’s deputies are very aware of the Democrats’ “chaos” narrative.
“We need to control the narrative so we keep the trust of American people,” border czar Tom Homan told Breitbart News in November. “Sometimes you’ve got to slow roll it, but other times, I think, the shock of it will move people,” to return to their home countries, he said, adding:
This won’t be neighborhood sweeps. This is a targeted enforcement operation. We know exactly who we’re going to arrest before we leave office. … Every arrest we make has been approved by a supervisor. We know exactly who we’re looking for. We have a pretty good idea where we’re going to find them. They got to get approval to do it. So it’s going to be well, well-planned, humane operation.
But Homan and other deputies are also trying to carefully raise the number of deportations.
On January 23 for example, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to expand the number of assigned law-enforcement officers:
The directive gives Department of Justice (DOJ) law enforcement officials in the U.S. Marshals, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons authority to investigate and apprehend illegal aliens.
“Thanks to the last Administration’s open border policies, we’ve seen violent criminals and gang members terrorize American communities. Today’s action empowers law enforcement officials at the DOJ to help identify and apprehend aliens who have illegally come into our country. Mobilizing these law enforcement officials will help fulfill President Trump’s promise to the American people to carry out mass deportations. For decades, efforts to find and apprehend illegal aliens have not been given proper resources. This is a major step in fixing that problem.”
Trump’s deputies also must be careful that the deportations do not prompt migrant workers — and their managers — to break critical supply chains, such as in the food sector. Some social media reports claim to see already a steep production drop-off at some of the nation’s vital food production centers.
In his first term, his policy of steady, gradual deportation prompted companies to gradually spend $50 billion on workplace technology, such as meatpacking robots. That policy helped avoid economic disruption and also ensured that American employees earned more money by getting more work done each day.
@togebrat I live next door to a 24/7 bakery factory, and the parking lot has been empty for days. No workers, no deliveries, nothing. This is what happens when migrant workers are forced out. It’s not just a political headline—it’s affecting our food supply and local businesses in real-time. #FoodShortages #MigrantWorkers #RealTalk
♬ original sound – Simplytogepy
Read the full article here