Washington
CNN
—
President Donald Trump has quickly mobilized wide swaths of the federal government to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants in the United States, part of a broader strategy to amass a large enforcement machine.
The administration has sent troops to the US-Mexico border, utilized military aircraft to repatriate recent border crossers, and deployed people from multiple federal agencies, including those under the Justice Department, to augment immigration enforcement operations. Those shifts may cause tensions between agencies, as they compete for limited resources and manpower.
The administration is also drawing up plans to expand the government’s holding capacity, turning to military bases and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And private contractors are discussing options amongst themselves as they look to ramp up detention capacity.
“This gets them over one of the biggest hurdles they have which is resources,” said John Sandweg, former acting ICE director under the Obama administration, noting that getting additional funds from Congress will take time.
“By elevating this to a national security priority, tapping into DOD’s abundant resources and DOJ with the federal agents, it’s an immediate surge of resources,” he added.
The Trump administration is also expected to tap state and local law enforcement in the weeks to come to assist in their efforts to arrest undocumented immigrants. Combined, the efforts mark a dramatic scaling up of the administration’s enforcement apparatus and reflect Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda.
White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday that arrest quotas for Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices of 75 per day should be treated as a “floor, not a ceiling.”
“The goal is to arrest at least that many, but hopefully many more, and the Department of Justice is going to be closely involved in providing the manpower to help achieve those objectives,” Miller said.
‘A force multiplier’
US Customs and Border Protection has also been called upon to assist ICE, as the latter agency’s field offices come under increasing pressure, according to multiple sources.
Interior enforcement is complex, often requiring careful planning, surveillance and operations that take place in the predawn hours. Over the course of the past week, teams of ICE officers, along with agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, deployed nationwide to arrest undocumented immigrants who had been targeted as public safety and national security threats, according to Trump officials.
In an interview with CNN last week, White House border czar Tom Homan touted the joint effort, calling it a “gamechanger,” and describing the teams as a “force multiplier.”
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