Trump's all hat and no cattle. The illegals know it, the Democrats know it, the only people who don't know it are the Trump voters.
ICE already has been stretched thin by the near-record influx of migrants at the southern border, chiefly from Central America, over the last year. Its record of deportations was relatively low even before that. In fiscal 2017, which includes Trump’s first six months in office, ICE deported only 226,119 immigrants, according to federal data.
Traditionally, ICE has prioritized criminals for deportation. Of the 160,000 arrests made by ICE in 2018, about 120,000 were picked up illegally crossing the border, or were in custody of law enforcement for criminal offenses. Only 40,000 were detained in ICE raids or other actions inside the country.
Randy Capps, a research director at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said ICE doesn’t have the manpower to carry out a vast surge of arrests.
“How are you going to get from 40,000 to a million?” he said. “Are you going to hire 25 times as many ICE officers?”
