Trump’s deportation agenda at crossroads with Homeland Security shake-up
The Department of Homeland Security will soon be under new management, an opportunity to reset President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda or to double down on his signature campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.
The White House’s political director recently encouraged party lawmakers during a retreat at the Republican president’s golf club in Florida to focus on immigration enforcement against criminals, a pivot from the mass deportation agenda he ran on. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the aggressive operations have created a “hiccup” for the party, which is now embarking on a “course correction.” Yet all indications are that Trump’s mass deportation operation is not stalling out but intensifying, with billions of dollars being spent to hire Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, build warehouse detention sites and meet the administration’s goal of rounding up and removing some 1 million immigrants from the US this year.
“We are at an interesting moment where it has been an inflection point - the public has finally seen what mass detention and mass deportation mean,” said Sarah Mehta, who tracks the issue at the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This is not an agency that’s slowing down,” she said. “They’re really going forward with some of the cruelest policies.” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the president’s policies have sent immigrants out of the US, either through forced deportations or on their own, and sealed up the US-Mexico border.
“Nobody is changing the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda,” she said. The questions put Homeland Security at a crossroads. Secretary Kristi Noem is on her way out, and Trump’s nominee to replace her, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, appears this week for Senate confirmation hearings.
After the intense deportation sweeps in Minneapolis and other cities — and the deaths of at least three US citizens at the hands of officers - Democratic lawmakers are refusing to provide routine funding unless the department changes its policies.
At the same time, those who believe Trump won the White House with his mass deportation agenda are disappointed the administration did not achieve its goals last year and insist he must do better.
“There has been a lot of talk in Congress and now in the White House about kind of backing away from President Trump’s, candidate Trump’s, mass deportation promise,” said Rosemary Jenks, co-founder of the Immigration Accountability Project, which argues for deportations.
