Top officials and experts in the Trump administration said deportation is poised to rise in the coming months as Trump paves new avenues to strengthen arrests and withdrawals.
DHS spokesman Tricia McLaughlin said the high levels of illegal immigration made the number of deportees during the Biden era appearing to be “artificially high.”
Trump campaigned for the White House, which promised to illegally deport millions of US immigrants in the largest deportation operation in US history. But the first numbers suggest that Trump could struggle to rival higher deportation rates during the last years of the Biden administration when numerous immigrants crossed illegally and made it easier for them to be caught.
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Caleb Vitero, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he was reassigned on Friday for failing to meet expectations, and Trump officials and two others are familiar with the issue. Deportation efforts could take off in months to bring out exiles from other countries through agreements from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica, sources said.
The US military supported more than 12 troops’ deportation flights to Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and India. The Trump administration also flew Venezuelan immigrants to US naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Trump said in late January that his administration would prepare to detain up to 30,000 immigrants there despite a boost from civil liberty groups. Military-supported deportation could grow, given the Pentagon’s vast budget and ability to spike resources. Meanwhile, while expanding deportation, the administration is working to make it easier for foreign immigrants to be arrested without criminal records and to detain more people with final deportation orders.
Last month, the Department of Justice issued a memo allowing ICE officials to arrest immigrants in US immigration courts, rolling back Biden-era policies restricting such arrests. On Wednesday, the US State Department designated Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and seven other criminal gangs and cartels as terrorist organizations. Under US immigration law, it is possible that people with ties to gang members designated as terrorists and groups can be deported. The Trump administration has also pulled agents from ICE’s Investigation Unit, the Justice Department, the IRS and the State Department to help with arrests and investigations.
Jessica Vaughn, policy director at the Center for Immigration Research, supports lower levels of immigration, but said these investigative agents can help crack down on employers who hire workers without legal status and those with eventual deportation orders.
“These are all difficult cases,” Vaughn said. “In the case of work operations, you’re planning some research ahead of it, but all of that takes a lot of time,” Ice arrested around 14,000 people in Trump’s first three weeks, border emperor Tom Homan said last week. That’s 667 per day – an average of two last year, but 15 million arrests a year are not million. The ice arrest, which spiked to around 800-1,200 people a day in Trump’s first week, fell as detention centers surged as detention centers filled up and officers returned to Target.
“It’s going to be like turning a super tanker for the first few months,” Isaxon said. “The private parts of the US government can only do that much.”
According to data provided by DHS, in Trump’s first month in office, ICE doubled the arrests of people who were charged or convicted, compared to the same period a year ago.
While arrests are rising, ice detention spaces remain a limiting factor. The agency currently has around 41,100 detainees and has the funds to hold 41,500.
According to agency data issued in mid-February, around 19,000 of these detainees were arrested by ICE and about 22,000 were picked up by U.S. border authorities. According to data from the same agency, of the 19,000 people arrested on ICE, approximately 2,800 had no criminal history. That figure rose from 858 in mid-January before Trump took office. On Friday, the Republican-led U.S. Senate passed a bill that would provide $340 billion over four years for border security, deportation, energy deregulation and additional military spending. However, the parties remain divided on how they can proceed with funding plans, and Trump is hoping that the funds will be combined with tax cuts.
