 "3,000 arrests a day! Is ICE failing to meet Trump's daily arrest quota amid widening protests?")
Is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) failing to meet its daily arrest quota?
Since Donald Trump took office for the second time, ICE has been focussing on mass deportations.
Which is no surprise given that deporting illegal immigrants was the central plank of Trump’s campaign for a return to the Oval Office.
However, many would be stunned to learn that ICE has consistently fallen short of the standards set by the White House when it comes to daily arrests.
The development comes as the White House has demanded that the agency increase the number of daily arrests in the backdrop of ongoing protests in America.
But what happened? What do we know about ICE failing to meet these targets? And what has the reaction been?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
The White House is said to be unhappy with ICE’s performance since Trump returned to office.
The agency has thus far made around 100,000 arrests during Trump’s second term began in January.
But this is nowhere near enough for the White House.
The administration now wants ICE to make at least 3,000 arrests per day.
The agency was earlier set a target by the White House of making 1,000 arrests per day.
The new goal was set after top White House aide Stephen Miller – who many say is the brain behind Trump’s immigration policy – read the riot act to top ICE officials in May.
Miller during the meeting is said to have told the officials to cast as wide a net as possible.
He told officials to go after anyone here illegally and not just those who are criminals.
Miller specifically told officials to go after locations which attract migrant workers – singling out Home Depot and 7-11 by name.
Miller, who shouted at the top officials, threatened lay offs at the agency if the arrest targets were not met.
“President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day,” Miller told Fox News in late May.
This gain significance in light of the fact that Los Angeles has been in turmoil since the weekend after ICE arrested a number of migrants in the city.
The message was “all about the numbers, not the level of criminality,” a person in the know said.
One official said Miller did not seem to understand how ICE works on a day-to-day basis – nor did he comprehend the logistics of doing so.
“The numbers they want are just not possible in a place like L.A. unless you go to day labourer sites and arrest every illegal alien,” the ex-ICE official said.
The Trump administration earlier claimed they were only going after “the worst of the worst” – murderers, rapists and gang members.
Despite its best efforts, ICE hasn’t been able to match the goal set by the White House.
The agency last week – on June 3 and June 4 – arrested over 2000 people per day.
ICE has since enrolled hundreds of people into its Alternative to Detention (ATD) program – in which it releases people it deems not to be a danger to the public but keeps track of them via technology like ankle monitors.
The agency, as of Monday, has just 55,000 people in custody.
Arrests aren’t the only metric in which the Trump Administration is lagging the Biden administration.
In fact, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan In May claimed that the government had deported around 200,000 people in four months – less than the Biden regime did during a similar period. In fact, the Biden administration faced even higher levels of immigration.
What has the reaction been?
Many immigrants are worried.
Veronica Navarrete, who was accompanying an asylum seeker from Ecuador, told NBC that immigrants are worried.
They seem to be debating whether or not to show up for their appointments.
“If you enter, there’s a possibility that they’ll take you into custody,” Navarrete said. “And if you don’t enter, you’ve missed your appointment, and that’s automatic deportation. We have no way out.”
Such fears are valid.
On Sunday, more than a hundred people gathered outside the jail in Butler County, Ohio, to protest the detention of a 19-year-old football player from Honduras.
Emerson Colindres, 19, has been in America since he was eight years old.
He graduated from high school in May.
Colindres is currently being monitored via the ICE’s “alternatives to detention” program.
Colindres was taken into custody after he received a text message to come in for an appointment last week.
Colindres was ordered deported after his family’s asylum claim was denied, but he had been appearing for regular check-ins and had a pending visa application, his mother, Ada Baquedano, said in an interview.
“They want to deport him, but he knows nothing about our country,” she said. “He’s been here since he was very little.”
Experts have slammed the Trump administration’s action.
“[With] mass arresting of people on Alternatives to Detention or at their ICE check ins or at immigration court hearings, the dragnet is so wide that there’s no possible valid argument that could be made that these individuals are all dangerous,” Atenas Burrola Estrada, an attorney with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, told NBC News.
“It seems like they’re just arresting people they think might be in the country without status and amenable to deportation,” Julia Gelatt, associate director of the US immigration policy program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said.
However, the White House has defended the Trump administration’s actions.
“If you are present in the United States illegally, you will be deported,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said.
“This is the promise President Trump made to the American people and the administration is committed to keeping it.”
Homan himself remains undaunted.
“They’ll continue every day, not only in California, Los Angeles, they’re gonna continue every city across the country – we have teams throughout the country that are out there looking for those in the country,” Homan told CNN. “We’re in every city and country, and ICE is going to be out every single day and will continue to be there regardless what’s happening in LA.”
With inputs from agencies
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