Donald J. Trump is approaching the 40-day mark of his presidency. It’s amazing how much his administration has accomplished thus far.
Of course, much more should be done.
Reuters published an article on February 21 entitled, “Trump’s deportation of migrants have been below Biden’s, but poised to rise.”
The piece shows the Trump admin has gotten off to a good start and is planning to increase the volume of detentions and deportations.
Here’s how it begins: “U.S. President Donald Trump deported 37,660 people during his first month in office, previously unpublished U.S. Department of Homeland Security data show, far less than the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in the last full year of Joe Biden’s administration.”
But remember, by the last year of Biden’s administration the damage had already been done, so he was trying to improve the situation for political purposes.
“A senior Trump administration official and experts said deportations were poised to rise in coming months as Trump opens up new avenues to ramp up arrests and removals.”
OK, we better see that come to pass.
Another factor to consider is that border crossings have drastically dropped, so that’s good. If your bathtub is about to overflow, the first step is to turn off the water.
“The acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Caleb Vitello, was reassigned on Friday due to a failure to meet expectations, a Trump official and two other people familiar with the matter said.”
What’s this? A government official being held to account “due to a failure to meet expectations”? Amazing!
Latin American countries are cooperating: “The deportation effort could take off in several months, aided by agreements from Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, and Costa Rica to take deportees from other nations, the sources said.”
The military is helping: “The U.S. military has assisted in more than a dozen military deportation flights to Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Ecuador, Peru and India. The Trump administration has also flown Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay… The military-assisted deportations could grow considering the Pentagon’s vast budget and ability to surge resources, according to Adam Isacson, a security expert with the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.”
The Trump admin is taking steps to streamline apprehensions: “Meanwhile, the administration is moving to make it easier to arrest deportable migrants without criminal records and to detain more people with final deportation orders.”
ALL illegal aliens, regardless of what else they are doing and how long they’ve been here, are legally subject to deportation.
“Last month, the Justice Department issued a memo allowing ICE officers to arrest migrants at U.S. immigration courts, rolling back a Biden-era policy that limited such arrests.”
They’re getting help from other government agencies: “The Trump administration is also pulling from ICE’s investigative arm, the Justice Department, the IRS, and State Department to assist with arrests and investigations.”
Ha, ha, that’s great, get the IRS and State Department to help!
“Jessica Vaughan, a policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies… said those investigative agents could help crack down on employers who hire workers without legal status and people who have final deportation orders.
‘Those are all harder cases,” Vaughan said. ‘In the case of a worksite operation, you’ve got a lot of planning to do, some investigation that precedes it, all of which takes a lot of time.’”
They ought to be doing many worksite raids.
The article reports that there were 14,000 ICE arrests in Trump’s first three weeks, an average of 667 daily, twice the average of last year.
During Trump’s first week they reached 800-1,200 arrests per day. That decreased after detention centers were filled up.
Well, build some more. Or use tent cities, which would be cheaper.
In Trump’s first month, arrests of those with criminal charges or convictions was double that of a year ago.
Support from Congress would help Trump increase detentions and deportations.
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