The ICE chief of the Obama era identifies Trump’s biggest deportation problem

A former top immigration and customs application (ICE) the official sounds the alarm on The mass deportation strategy of the Trump administrationrecounting Newsweek In an interview that the impulse for the higher arrest number is the weakening of public safety.

“This current administration is chaotic. It moves at speed. Barack ObamaFrom August 2013 to February 2014.

“When you have your officers and agents focused on taking as many people as possible. What you do is deviate the resources that could be focused on those more serious criminal populations, the real problem here,” Sandweg said.

Trump promised voters the mass deportations of people living in the US without legal status. His term began with Widespread immigration raidsa stop to processing the asylum for migrants without documents and executive orders aimed The extension of the ICE authority to arrest and hold those in the country illegally.

The administration has focused on increasing deportation operations, as it is forgotten to eliminate millions of immigrants without documents.

But Sandweg believes that an obsession with increasing the deportation number undermines the Agency’s mission to protect public safety. According to the former director, a more efficient strategy would be similar to the more targeted application of the Obama years.

During Obama’s administration, Ice deported about 2.8 million people. Deportations increased constantly during the first term of the president, starting with 389,843 eliminations in 2009 and reaching 435,498 in 2013. Deportations decreased after 2013, decreasing to 240,255 to 2016 – the smallest total annual of its presidency.

“If they used the strategies and tactics of the Obama era I used, I would have much less concerns,” said Sandweg. He stressed that a more effective strategy would be to prioritize the elimination of people who represent significant public safety threats.

“If you say, hey, our goal is to deport as many people, by definition, what comes to result is a lower quality of removal. It is easier and faster to catch people who do not represent public safety than to catch people who are dangerous,” said Sandweg.

“Gangsters, serious criminals are just harder to find. You know, this is just a more difficult, more difficult population … in a perfect world, ice is no longer measured by the number of people they have deported, but rather, you know the quality of these removal, which they go out.

“Unfortunately, the administration adopted an opposite approach.”

In the first 50 days of the second term, Trump has supervised an increased increase in ice arrests –more than double -rate doubling compared to the Biden Administration – according to the recently issued figures.

Sandweg said: “Trump has created this narrative that the agency did not work at maximum capacity – but this is not true. Ice already worked at capacity, arresting as many migrants as they could, given their resources. So the frustration from the White House comes from unrealistic expectations.”

Department of Internal Security (DHS) and ICE below Trump claim that they have discovered evidence that the Biden administration manipulated the ice arrest data to mislead the public. Officials claim that the previous administration “cooks books”. According to DHS officials, the administration would have inflated the arrest number while issuing thousands of people in the community in accordance with capture and release policies.

In the fiscal year 2024, ICE reported 33,242 large arrests-which are performed in the Community settings, rather than in prisons or border control points. In the first 50 days of Trump’s second term, Ice has already made 32,809 big arrests, almost equaling the total for the entire previous year.

Among the migrants without documents arrested, 14,111 have previous criminal convictions, 9,980 are facing criminal charges and 8,718 were detained for immigration violations.

Ever since Trump’s second term began on January 20, ICE officials report that 1,555 arrests have involved suspect band members, 44 have involved foreign fugitives, and 39 have involved well -known terrorists or suspects.

“We returned to its basic mission, which arrest the people who violate our immigration law. Secretary Noem and I change the ICE culture in an action and responsibility,” the interim director of ICE, Todd Lyons told a press call.

“What Trump is trying to do is a mass deportation of people who are currently living in the United States,” Sandweg said.

“I think one of the things that are lost in all this narrative is that the ice is full of really good people, who work hard to do America, you know, they want to make the country a safer country. I think what is unhappy in all is that the agents will be vilified.”

As Trump increases mass deportations, critics like Sandweg warn that prioritizing numbers on safety could leave the most dangerous criminals to slip through cracks.

According to Sandweg, focusing on the mass arrest of the limited resources of ICE and removes agents to follow violent criminals and national security threats. This, he says, makes the country less safe.

Supporters of Trump’s approach, however, claim that a wider application strategy determines illegal immigration and restores the rule of law. They claim that each person without documents violates the federal statutes, and the elimination of as many people as possible sends a clear message that the US will not tolerate illegal entry.

The White House previously said in January that they consider all migrants without legal status as “criminals”.