The decisive moment of Trump’s immigration crackdown

In a hot political summer, seemingly harmless moment: Tom Homan walked outside the White House last Wednesday at Trump’s border cabinet, when a group of reporters asked him if he had a few minutes to ask. The dramatic Homan wore a cruel DC heat, his bald dome hat looked at his watch like a hard hat. Of course, he nodded. A reporter asked him he was right iceBlock, an app that reminds users to raid. “It’s just a matter of time for us to ambush,” Homan said. Another asked if the raid was escalated in Washington, D.C. The raids were escalating everywhere – “a thousand teams a day.” Then there was Pablo Manriquez, Immigration insidersAsked smartly: “Why can you achieve much more than Trump has achieved under Trump’s leadership?”

Of course, this is true. The number of deportations is not particularly high at present for all aggression and abuse by the Trump campaign against immigrants. Suddenly, there was a tiny crack in the authoritative veneer. Homan claims Obama’s numbers have been exaggerated. Under Trump, “We have honest numbers.” Homan sounds defensive. He continued: “Despite what the media said, the vast majority of people we are removing are criminals and public safety threats. I read every day ice Arrests of non-criminals, ice There are more non-criminals detained than criminals. This is a pile of garbage. ”

The exchange hints at the alarming pressure accumulated this summer – at the huge detention and deportation ceremony he directed, and, most importantly, the people targeted by the Trump administration. In late May, according to Washington ReviewerThere are about fifty senior field officials ice Stephen Miller, the president’s closed adviser, brought special agents from the Department of Homeland Security to Washington because he believes it is a low level of detainees- The first hundred days The second Trump administration ice About six thousand people were arrested. Miller reportedly asked the official: “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-11?” ExaminerA senior law enforcement and evacuation official said, according to public information from the Department of Homeland Security and the White House, ice Focus on criminals, not the ordinary illegal immigrant population. Miller replied: “What do you mean, are you going to hunt down criminals?” officials said: “That’s what Tom Homan says every time on TV.”

The Department of Homeland Security later Examiner, Claiming Miller “hadn’t said a lot of what you said.” But, ever since, ice The detention has roughly doubled, from an average of 10 million a month between January and April to nearly 35,000 in June. according to ice As of July, statistics were made over 70% of detainees without criminal convictions. About a year after the first Trump term, immigration politics triggered the administration’s extraordinary cruelty against undocumented children, with thousands of people separated from their parents during their detention. This time, this problem may depend on the deeper and deeper cuts ice Operations are taking place in the U.S. community, and it’s their way to stand out from the worst and even those with criminal records to meet their numbers.

Cuts are getting deeper and deeper. According to the Associated Press, July ice Maine agents arrested Jon Evans, a local policeman originally from Jamaica. A few months ago, the Old Orchard Beach Police Department, where Evans served as Summer Reserve Officer, had confirmed that he was eligible to work in the United States through the federal government’s own electronic verification system. This week, a high school graduate in Scarsdale, New York recently arrived in the U.S. from South Korea with his mother, NBC was arrested at a daily visa hearing in 2021. one era Report Focused on Louisiana on the sudden sprawling archipelago of detention – The system has crossed about 400,000 people since January, with a desire as smooth as FedEx, including a narrative of Badar Khan Suri in Georgetown, who visited Georgetown Israel. “There are too many games in the U.S. right now,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said in the Senate last week. “There are so many games happening around the country, secret police are running around the country, picking people up from streets with legal rights. There is so much going on in this country.”

Booker’s resistance is far less than that of famous figures. In San Diego, local Catholic Bishop Michael Pham – himself a former Vietnam refugee who has been accompanying immigrants to court hearings to avoid masking ice Agent. In Los Angeles, a high school teacher named Ron Gochez Recently told this era Columnist Michelle Goldberg, “We patrol the entire city from 5:30 a.m.,” used a megaphone to warn of undocumented and called a recorded protest. All over the country, such as iceBlocks (“See something, click something”) and local hotlines and resistor networks have also been propagated. Last week, the video spread out citizens at a local restaurant in Kansas City, facing a bunch of ice Agent. Surprisingly, agents and citizens demanding their names and badge numbers are small in population distance: both sides are flat, slightly burly white.

Immigration has long been President Trump’s political phone card and his greatest strength. But last week NBC News pointed out that a significant decline among Americans who favor Trump’s handling of the issue – from well above fifty percent at the beginning of the year to about 40 percent in recent public opinion polls. (this Quote Export Jorge, a 21-year-old interviewee, voted in favor of Trump last year but opposed the president on immigration: “It’s immoral…he thinks he can bring everyone to everyone.”) This is also the 40% Trump rating in the latest Reuters survey in the past week. Meanwhile, public attention to the issue is eased: Last year, 55% of Americans said they wanted to reduce immigration, according to Gallup. By July, that number had dropped to 30%, with a record 79% of Americans saying they believe immigration is in principle good for the country. Democrats have recently avoided this issue because in the late Biden era, the public largely distrusts them in managing immigration. But this is in some way a product of post-pandemic immigration through the southern border, and the struggles of many cities to immediately manage so many new immigrants. Things change over time, so politics is carried out in a softer way.

In other words, Homan’s summer is the fulcrum. Congress has approved the budget three times funds iceLaw enforcement and deportation operations, promise a broader law enforcement agency, an expanded network of private detention centers, and a deeper confrontation with foreign-born people and their communities ice It seems unlikely to slow down. At the same time, resistance is growing and politics is changing. The country may see next year that what Booker calls the “secret police” permanently is a meaningful step towards authoritarianism, or it may retreat from that edge. The Senator from New Jersey is right. There are many things in the United States. ♦