Folks, this is one of the reasons why Donald J. Trump slingshot to the top of the heap during the 2016 Republican primaries. It’s one of the reasons why he’s president of the United States right now. He promised to enforce the border and—shocker—deport people who shouldn’t be here. That’s not controversial. That’s the law. Since Trump’s 2016 win over Hillary Clinton, he has sought to make good on his promise to get the border under control. It has not been an easy task. It remains a promise he has yet to fulfill, something made even more difficult now that House Democrats control the lower chamber after the 2018 midterm. Some Pentagon has been re-appropriated towards funding parts of the wall, which House Democrats challenged; a federal judge slapped it down. Still, the number of border apprehensions has soared into six-figure territory. It’s a crisis, though the Left thinks it’s a manufactured one. It’s not. The Department of Homeland Security cannot handle the influx. It’s running out of money to deal with the problem.
Still, the president intends to enforce the law, announcing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will begin a large-scale operation to find illegals and deport them. It’s about time, though it’s probably not coming within days, or at least that’s what The Washington Post is reporting. If it’s within the week, fine—but it could be some time before this plan is put into effect. Let’s hope sooner rather than later (via WaPo):
Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in. Mexico, using their strong immigration laws, is doing a very good job of stopping people.......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019
....long before they get to our Southern Border. Guatemala is getting ready to sign a Safe-Third Agreement. The only ones who won’t do anything are the Democrats in Congress. They must vote to get rid of the loopholes, and fix asylum! If so, Border Crisis will end quickly!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019
Large-scale ICE enforcement operations are typically kept secret to avoid tipping off targets. In 2018, Trump and other senior officials threatened the mayor of Oakland, Calif., with criminal prosecution for alerting city residents that immigration raids were in the works.
Trump and his senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, have been prodding Homeland Security officials to arrest and remove thousands of family members whose deportation orders were expedited by the Justice Department this year as part of a plan known as the “rocket docket.”
In April, acting ICE director Ronald Vitiello and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were ousted after they hesitated to go forward with the plan, expressing concerns about its preparation, effectiveness and the risk of public outrage from images of migrant children being taken into custody or separated from their families.
[…]
U.S. officials with knowledge of the preparations have said in recent days that the operation was not imminent, and ICE officials said late Monday night that they were not aware that the president planned to divulge their enforcement plans on Twitter.
Executing a large-scale operation of the type under discussion requires hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of U.S. agents and supporting law enforcement personnel, as well as weeks of intelligence gathering and planning to verify addresses and locations of individuals targeted for arrest.
The president’s claim that ICE would be deporting “millions” also was at odds with the reality of the agency’s staffing and budgetary challenges. ICE arrests in the U.S. interior have been declining in recent months because so many agents are busy managing the record surge of migrant families across the southern border with Mexico.
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Either way, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and the anti-ICE faction of Democrats on the Hill are probably not going to like this announcement. No, probably isn’t right; they’re going to hate it. Yet, even with Democrats giving nothing to Trump to help him fight illegal immigration and to calm our crisis at the border, Trump was still able to get Mexico to get serious about stopping these hordes of migrants before they reach our southern border. Granted, it caused some anxiety in the markets, and with some Republicans, because he threatened to implement tariffs, but that was the only card he had left to play.
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