What a clown.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is averaging approximately 7,000 deportations per month from the U.S. interior, according to the agency's latest data. With unauthorized border crossings soaring under Trump to their highest levels in more than a decade, ICE has been facing a shortage of funds and detention beds, and experts say that a large-scale push to arrest and deport hundreds of thousands of migrants would be exorbitantly expensive and highly unlikely. ...
With hundreds of ICE agents deployed to the border in recent months, interior arrests have dipped. From October to December, the most recent period for which statistics are available, ICE deported 22,169 people from the U.S. interior, down 7 percent from the same period in 2017. About 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants are in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
To meet the president's goal of "millions" of deportations, ICE would need significantly more agents and funding. ICE's division of enforcement and removal operations has fewer than 6,000 officers nationwide who are potentially available to carry out the kind of arrests described by the president, which would entail higher risks because they would involve knocking on doors and arresting parents and children in homes and apartments. ...
John Sandweg, acting ICE director in 2013 and 2014 during the Obama administration, questioned ICE's capability to undertake such a massive operation, given the agency's staffing and budget constraints. ICE is detaining the largest number of migrants in its history - more than 50,000 a day - and is under "incredible strain" because of an influx of Central American migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, Sandweg said.
At its peak, ICE deported more than 400,000 immigrants during the entire 2012 fiscal year, and more than half of those were border-crossers who could be quickly sent home. "The idea that somehow by just presidential will the agency's going to go [up] 250 percent to the biggest, largest number of removals in its history is just ridiculous," Sandweg said. ...
The Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts, said it is aware of at least 12,780 removal orders issued to "family units" from Sept. 24 through Friday. Of those, nearly 11,000 orders were issued in absentia, meaning the immigrant did not appear in court. The orders were mailed to their houses, said Justice Department spokesman Alexei Woltornist, with the largest numbers in Houston, Miami and Atlanta. ...
Trump told a cheering crowd in Phoenix three months before his election that he would deport millions of immigrants who had allegedly committed crimes. "Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone," Trump said. "They're going to be gone. It will be over. They're going out. They're going out fast."
