Washington — When Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullen When senators questioned him during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his administration off the front pages of the news.
To some extent, he has. Gone are the social media videos of retirees now Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino Clashing with demonstrators. Mullen’s predecessor, Kristi NoemShe made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. in contrast, Mullen went to North Carolina To review hurricane recovery efforts.
The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to the central policy that helped put Trump back in the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a calmer approach to implementation. Despite this shift, the administration insists it is not backing away from its lofty deportation goals.
“They’ve clearly fallen back on their previous cowboy tactics, for lack of a better word,” said Mark Krikorian, president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. “But it is not clear that this means they are actually backing down from immigration.”
The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year Predominantly Democratic-led citiesWhich led to arrests in large-scale campaigns. The crackdown sparked clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officers and led to… Minneapolis shooting deaths For two US citizens.
Since then, the president’s hardline anti-immigration agenda has changed She lost popularity with voters No new high-profile operations have been launched in the cities, raising questions about the administration’s strategy.
“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegal immigrants who shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a much calmer way,” Mullen said in an April 16 interview with CNBC.
ICE arrests decreased In recent months, the number of people detained in immigration detention centers has decreased As high as approximately 72,000 In January to 58,000 this week, according to Data obtained by the Associated Press.
But in a sign of its continued resolve, ICE says in budget documents that it plans to turn away 1 million people this fiscal year and next, compared with about 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress giving the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump’s immigration agenda last year.
The administration aims to have enough space to detain nearly 100,000 people this fiscal year, more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention centers last year. The administration has already done so It expanded its detention capacity With the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.
“They are really working to build a tremendous system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor to ICE, during the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton, and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said there had been no change in Trump’s strategy.
“President Trump’s top priority has always been to deport criminal illegal aliens who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.
ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Immigrant advocates are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more closely to eliminating protections for immigrants who have temporary legal status to remain in the United States while their cases are adjudicated.
In one example, the number of green cards approved by USCIS dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration to US humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualify for asylum, and saw the largest declines.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kaler said the decrease was due to increased screening of applicants by the department.
It also prompted the Trump administration to strip hundreds of thousands of people of temporary protected status Master case Weigh whether he has exceeded his authority to do so in order to be heard supreme court this week.
Advocates see this as a way to send a scary message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.
ICE has also focused over the past year on Establishing agreements with judicial authorities Across the country which allows local and state law enforcement to perform a wide range of immigration enforcement tasks, from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.
These agreements, known as 287g, have It has grown from 135 in 20 states Before Trump took office, there were more than 1,400 in what are now 41 states and territories.
some states, Most notably Florida and Texas, mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, will likely prioritize more discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE, MPI’s Meissner said.
“Ultimately, some of this may work to increase numbers,” Meissner said.
Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to actually eliminate illegal immigration is to make work for immigrants so difficult that they will leave on their own.
The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life more difficult for people who are in the country illegally, including… Limiting who can live in public housing Depending on immigration status, Share Medicaid information with ICE and Claims from people in the country illegally To register with the federal government.
Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send letters to alert employers when an employee’s name and his or her Social Security number don’t match. Authorities can frequently and continually review I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government to prove that new employees are legally able to work. They can ask banks to collect nationality information about customers.
Whatever the strategy moving forward, the administration faces intense pressure not to back down from its goals.
“The numbers are very low,” said Mike Howell, a member of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for mass deportation. How to manage Up to 1 million deportations per year could actually be reached using tactics such as on-site enforcement.
“The numbers of deportations are very low, they need to be much higher, and they could be much higher,” Howell said.
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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.