They say no news is good news, but maybe the Republicans are just trying to cover up their incomprehensible failures…
The Trump administration stopped publishing daily numbers after reports from the Department of Homeland Security showed arrests of undocumented immigrants falling from about 800 per day in late January to fewer than 600 during the first 13 days of February.
These are levels far below the xenophobic Trump administration’s goal of 1,200 to 1,500 arrests per day.
“I’m not happy. We need more‚” said Tom Homan, Trump’s designated “border czar,” who refused to comment further.
Stopping the daily reports reveals declining confidence after President Donald Trump launched an all-of-government immigration crackdown with the urgency of a wartime effort, a mobilization comparable in scope to the responses to the 9/11 attacks and the coronavirus pandemic.
Despite the rapid infusion of resources, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is struggling to arrest higher numbers of immigrants and falling far short of the administration’s goals and Trump is causing problems alienating those who can be most helpful.
Mexico is crucial to U.S. migration management, as increased Mexican enforcement cut unauthorized border arrivals to the lowest in five years. However, years of bilateral collaboration are now at risk because Trump threatened 25% tariffs on Mexican imports.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has new leverage compared to the time the first Trump administration threatened to impose tariffs because her government is indispensable to managing migrant arrivals at the border.
The president assigned federal agents from across the government to look for potential deportees. Supporting the deportation operation are “thousands” of FBI employees and personnel from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Trump may further expand manpower by deputizing Internal Revenue Service agents to investigate employers of people working illegally in the country.
Trump sent hundreds of troops to the southern border and military transport planes loaded with immigrants to as far away as India.
The Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, where U.S. forces once sent enemy combatants seized on the battlefield, is now a destination for immigrant detainees, many picked up at the Mexican border.
ICE officials may not have the money they need to carry out Trump’s ambitious operation, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who revealed that Trump’s budget director Russell Vought pleaded with lawmakers for more cash.
Biden sought bipartisan approval for a $19 billion funding package to enhance personnel, facilities, and repatriation resources, but Trump blocked his proposal.
Sources have said ICE’s average cost during the Biden administration for deporting a single person was about $10,500, including arrest, detention and the deportation flight.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is removing protections from deportation for some people, enlarging the pool of people who could be arrested and would need to be detained but space limits and court orders limiting detention time forced them to release some people that have been arrested.
On Feb. 6, the White House confirmed 461 people were released tracking them with ankle monitors and requiring them to check in with immigration officials.
“While there is this mass deportation effort in name, there is no resource change to the agencies that are involved,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “ICE is operating under the same budget that it had on Jan. 19.” Trump’s inauguration was Jan. 20.
Trump pledged to oversee the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, but his first administration conducted fewer than his predecessors.
President Barack Obama’s administration deported five million people over two terms, President George W. Bush’s administration deported 10 million, and President Bill Clinton’s administration deported 12 million.
President Joe Biden surpassed Trump’s 1.5 million deportations, with nearly 4.4 million repatriations, or more than any single presidential term since George W. Bush expelled 5 million people in his second term.
Other presidents focused on deporting individuals convicted of crimes, but Trump simply deported anyine who had entered the U.S. illegally, resulting in widespread family separations and the detention of thousands of children.
Trump is using Defense Department funds to hire contractors, that would allow civilian-run companies to quickly expand temporary holding centers, such as those that house migrants in tents, to staff those detention facilities, and transport detainees to concentration camps.
Immigration courts are backlogged with more than 3.7 million cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, and there is support across the political spectrum for more judges and support staff.
Despite the need for additional workforce, Trump fired 20 immigration judges without explanation amid sweeping moves to shrink the size of the government, said Matthew Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, which represents federal workers.
ICE did not respond to recent questions about the latest immigration enforcement numbers. There also was no response to a request for comment on the pace of arrests and the cost of the operations.
“I see a lot of show,” said Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff. “This administration wants to continuously bring in every piece of the government away from their mission.”
Houser added that federal law enforcement officials who usually focus on illicit firearms, drugs and sex traffickers are now “standing around in their jackets arresting noncriminals.”
But while money is flying out the door, results are not meeting goals, and Trump is running out of options, Vice President J.D. Vance used Catholic theology to justify the GOP’s xenophobic attitudes concerning mass deportations and isolationism, getting himself into a pissing match with Pope Francis.
“There is … a very Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” said Vance, bastardizing the Catholic faith. “A lot of the far left has completely inverted that; they seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside of their own borders.… The British prime minister should care about Brits, and the French should care about the French.”
The Roman Catholic pontiff sent a message clearing up Vance’s comments. Without mentioning the vice president by name, the pope attacked Vance’s logic and the way he used it to defend Trump’s cruel policies.
“Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: The human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation,” Pope Francis wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
While the Republicans have frequently hyped up fears over immigration, seldom have they stirred up religious arguments that fly in the face of sentiments such as the January 22, 2003, joint statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc. and Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano, which read: “migration between our two nations is necessary and beneficial.”
“As pastors to more than ninety million Mexican Catholics and sixty-five million U.S. Catholics, we witness the human consequences of migration in the life of society every day,” said the Catholic bishops of Mexico and the United States. “We witness the vulnerability of our people involved in all sides of the migration phenomenon, including families devastated by the loss of loved ones who have undertaken the migration journey and children left alone when parents are removed from them. We observe the struggles of landowners and enforcement personnel who seek to preserve the common good without violating the dignity of the migrant. And we share in the concern of religious and social service providers who, without violating civil law, attempt to respond to the migrant knocking at the door.”
Religious Americans do not hate citizens of our country, but Christians are supposed to care about people regardless of the borders. Hypocrisy is when bigoted or greedy people use religion to excuse the evil they perform.
Incompetence is how those hypocrites fail to do evil things that they are trying to do, as indicated by the Trump administration’s attempt to cover up its inability to meet its draconian goals.
Discover more from NJTODAY.NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.