ICE grabs an immigrant in New York City.
Photo: Adam Gray/Getty Images
Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have an arithmetic problem with their mass-deportation initiative. They appear frantic to ramp up deportations. Miller reportedly chewed out ICE brass (“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?”) on the numbers not long before the agency launched its fateful raids in Los Angeles. But at the same time, the administration has been getting major heat from certain industries — particularly agriculture and hospitality — that going after their workforces would be a really bad idea. Indeed, according to the New York Times, Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins lobbied her boss to ease up on farmworkers. Then, suddenly, Trump was expressing a change of heart on Truth Social. He wrote on June 12:
Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!
This wasn’t just loose talk. While border czar Tom Homan denied that any policy change on deportation targeting was underway, ICE itself took the hint, as Axios reported:
Tatum King, a senior ICE official, sent an email to agency officials nationwide, telling them to “please hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants, and operating hotels.”
So what’s the focus now? Trump made no bones about it in a Truth Social post on June 15:
[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!
There you have it: The president of the United States is very clearly telling his deportation shock troops to wage partisan war on cities that are the “Democrat Power Center,” based on the hallucinatory idea — a MAGA staple — that “Radical Left Democrats” are herding millions of undocumented workers to the polls to “cheat in Elections and grow the Welfare State.” It’s all completely fabricated but reflects a distinctly Trumpian mash-up of the “great replacement theory” and crime-wave myths. And the targeting of blue cities seems to have already taken place, Axios recently reported, especially in red states where state law-enforcement officials have encouraged maximum cooperation with ICE:
Efforts to arrest and remove unauthorized immigrants appear most aggressive in five southern states with Democratic-leaning cities, while deeply red, rural states are seeing less activity, according to an Axios analysis. …
[L]ocal law enforcement agencies in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia have been most cooperative with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through deals known as 287 (g) agreements. There are 629 such agreements now in place across the country. About 43% of them are in Florida, followed by 14% in Texas and 5% in Georgia.
The GOP-led state governments in Florida, Texas and Virginia also have made a point of pushing local agencies to partner with federal agents, leading to a series of high-profile, mass raids in those states.
In effect, Republican state administrations are working with the Feds to come down on Democratic-run cities to scourge unruly immigrant populations. And in blue states like California, the mass deportations feel more like all-out partisan war. Certainly the federalization of National Guard units and planned deployment of Marines to Los Angeles — a place Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem called a “city of criminals” that the administration would “liberate” from its “socialist” elected leadership — signaled an armed takeover more than any sort of law-enforcement initiative. And now Trump is making the partisanship behind it all too explicit for anyone to miss or deny. While this overt politicization of mass deportation may please Trump’s MAGA base, it will likely erode his popularity more generally. Immigration policy remains one of the president’s areas of strength, but according to the latest Silver Bulletin averages his approval rating on immigration is underwater, with 45 percent approving and 47 percent disapproving.
For now, Trump-friendly industries in Trump-friendly parts of the country need not worry so much, but all those radical-left hellholes better prepare for the onset of fire and ICE. After all, Stephen Miller has quotas to meet.
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