Shake-up at ICE will boost immigration numbers — just not the ones that matter most to Trump

The Trump administration’s leadership shake-up at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is likely to boost arrest numbers and fuel its aggressive messaging campaign, but will have little effect on President Donald Trump’s broader goal of rapidly deporting more immigrants, according to five people, including Trump administration officials, people close to the administration and former ICE officials. The Department of Homeland Security is installing Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection officials at a number of ICE field offices Trump officials feel are underperforming, part of a broader effort to boost arrest numbers across the country. 00:02 02:00 Read More Border Patrol’s expanded role is expected to funnel thousands of more arrests to ICE for processing, but the agency’s ability to remove people from the country remains hamstrung by limited bed capacity, bogged down immigration courts and too few planes for removal flights. “Border Patrol just wants to go out and arrest every person in the world, and it’s easy for them to do that because they go out and arrest them and they turn them over to ICE,” said an administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “You’re giving ICE all of these cases that aren’t ready to be removed. And that creates a challenge for ICE.” The dynamic highlights a tension at the center of the president’s second term immigration agenda. Trump officials are eager to ramp up arrests and removals, but continually run up against resource and operational challenges amid an overloaded deportation system. The Trump administration has seen historic lows for illegal border crossings, and roughly 60,000 migrants are currently in ICE detention, a major increase since the president took office. The number of daily arrests peaked at more than 2,000 but typically hover around 1,000 — far less than the 3,000-a-day target floated earlier this year by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. But even Trump allies continue to question the administration’s deportation figures — citing limited data transparency — and say removals can’t keep up with the pace of arrests, a problem that’s bound to expand. “That is the fundamental challenge,” said a person close to the Trump administration, also granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The real backlog is with the removal process.” The GOP megabill, signed by Trump in July, provided DHS with billions of dollars in fresh funding to bolster ICE’s ranks and expand detention capacity, but the build-out process has been slow and ICE has struggled with its hiring. The money has helped, but it hasn’t yet been able to square the mismatch between the White House’s large appetite for better numbers and ICE’s expanding but still limited capabilities. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson defended the administration’s progress and said the president’s “entire team is working in lockstep to implement the president’s policy agenda.” “The tremendous results from securing the border to deporting criminal illegal aliens speak for themselves,” she said. But there is significant friction among the Trump administration’s top immigration officials. Even as they share the same goal, they differ on the best way to accomplish the president’s promises to deport millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, said the administration official and others close to the administration. Border czar Tom Homan and acting ICE director Todd Lyons, two career immigration enforcement officials, are more cognizant of the agency’s limitations as it expands and are focused on apprehending criminals and immigrants who already have a final order of removal from an immigration judge and can be deported quickly, said an administration official and the two people close to the administration. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a chief adviser to Noem and a special governmental employee, want to ramp up numbers and are eager to use aggressive tactics to arrest all unauthorized immigrants, the people said. “It seems to me that [Lewandowski’s] thinking in political terms, whereas, Tom and Todd, I know they’re thinking in operational terms — the operational benefits to doing this, and public safety benefits and safety of ICE officers,” said the person close to the administration. “They didn’t get where they are without understanding the political aspect of it, but that’s not their primary concern.” DHS did not specifically respond to the notion that there are differing opinions inside the administration, but DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, responding to reports of internal tensions, said it’s “one team, one fight,” led by Noem. In a separate statement to POLITICO, she said the administration is working at “turbospeed on cost-effective and innovative ways” to deliver on mass deportations, citing the megabill that provided DHS funding to hire more ICE officers and expand detention capacity. “The Trump Administration is on pace to shatter historic records and deport nearly 600,000 illegal aliens by the end of President Donald Trump’s first year since returning to office,” she said. “More than 2 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. including 1.6 million who have voluntarily self-deported and over 527,000 deportations.” The administration’s latest shift is connected to Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who has led a series of aggressive raids across Chicago and its suburbs, said the official and one of the people close to the administration. Noem and her inner circle are impressed with Bovino’s approach. He has emerged as the key face of the Trump administration’s immigration blitz in sanctuary cities and was ordered by a federal judge this week to report to her daily after reports of combative enforcement in Chicago, including the use of tear gas. Watch: The Conversation Play Video1:46 Will Rep. Jasmine Crockett run for senate? “Border Patrol, as a general matter, is more equipped and better skilled at playing the political game,” said the administration official. “This very much shows how Border Patrol can get in front of DHS leadership and get them to do things that benefit the Border Patrol.” The efforts build on the Trump administration’s expanded use of CBP agents and Border Patrol officers, as well as law enforcement officials from across the federal government to support ICE’s operations in recent months. Border Patrol, in particular, is a more aggressive agency, and its expanded role will help the administration stoke fear in its targeting of blue cities, said Deborah Fleischaker, who served as ICE chief of staff under the Biden administration. “Border Patrol and ICE have different missions, and this appears to be part of the effort of trying to import the Border Patrol mission, which is much more militarized, much less constrained and a little more Wild West, and bring that into an agency that historically has been very focused on identifying and enforcing against specific targets,” she said. For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.