Q&A of the Day – Is ICE Divided in Deportation Strategies? What the Facts Show
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
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Today’s entry: @brianmuddradio What do you make of this? How many deported illegals have had criminal records?: https://www.foxnews.com/us/ice-leadership-shakeup-exposes-growing-dhs-friction-over-deportation-tactics-priorities
Bottom Line: The listener sent me a link to the Fox News story entitled: ICE leadership shakeup exposes growing DHS friction over deportation tactics, priorities. The crux of the story is a power struggle over deportation strategies within the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. One that’s leading to a series of changes in key field offices. So, about this...
A major leadership shakeup is underway at ICE, affecting field offices in at least eight cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Portland, Philadelphia, El Paso, and New Orleans. Many senior ICE field office leaders are being replaced with Border Patrol officials, intending to shift the detention and deportation strategy seemingly being brought about by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The changes stem from internal divisions over deportation strategy:
- One camp, led by Border Czar Tom Homan and ICE Director Todd Lyons, prioritizes targeting criminal aliens and those with final deportation orders.
- The opposing camp, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, senior adviser Corey Lewandowski, and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, pushes for broader, more aggressive operations to maximize deportations, including raids at common day labor pickup sites like Home Depot stores and car washes.
Senior DHS officials describe the atmosphere as "tense" and "combative," with concerns that the aggressive approach risks eroding public support and blurring ICE and Border Patrol roles. Border Patrol defends the strategy, arguing "mass deportations" include anyone in the U.S. illegally. DHS calls the reassignments "performance-based" and denies announcing personnel changes, while emphasizing focus on removing violent criminal aliens.
So basically, it’s like this. Top ICE officials, including Border Czar Tom Homan, want to remain focused on attempting to target and root out ‘criminal illegal aliens’, or those with existing criminal records, while the Border Patrol brass believes we should be casting a wide net, targeting illegal aliens wherever they happen to be. Secretary Noem believes in the Border Patrol strategy and therefore has ordered a reorganization with Border Patrol leaders taking over for many existing ICE leaders in the field. This leads us to today’s question.
As of this week, DHS reported a total of 2.127 million deportations since the onset of the Trump administration. Of those, about 75% have been of the self-directed variety. Clearly the fear of potential deportation has been and remains the most effective means of combating illegal immigration within the country. In answer to one of today’s questions, of the 527,000 DHS-directed deportations, approximately 369,000, or about 70%, have been deportations of criminal illegal immigrants. Meaning only about 158,000 people in this country illegally without a criminal history have been removed by the Trump-administration thus far. Also, notably, the known universe of criminal illegal aliens, as in those ICE has had contact with previously, was about 650,000 entering this year, meaning that over half, 57%, have already been deported. Often, those without records detained and deported were illegal aliens that were in direct contact within proximity of the targeted criminal illegal aliens. Here’s another key. There were only 127,000 total deportations (ICE and self-directed) in September...a number that’s well below the previous pace.
It was in mid-August in my story: Border Bombshell: Self Deportations Reach Record Levels, that I first began to wonder how much further DHS would be able to get with the existing strategy. I began to wonder if those who’re inclined to self-deport were early to do it, with what might be sharp declines in self-deportations in the future. The significant realigning of strategies would seemingly suggest that it wasn’t just me who had been wondering about that thing.
With estimates upwards of 20+ million illegal immigrants within the country entering this year, it’s clear that if President Trump’s promise of mass deportations is to take place, that it will need to come from more than just those choosing early on to self-deport. While we won’t know until we get there, it’s likely that certain segments of illegal aliens in society have watched the targeted approach of who has been detained and deported realizing that if they stay clear of those who have rap sheets in addition to being here illegally – they may be in the clear.
The change in philosophy to begin widely targeting those in the country illegally would likely create another catalyst that could lead to many more self-deportations. If illegal aliens begin to realize that they could be picked up to, that would likely result in the next potentially larger round of self-deportations. As we’ve heard from some who’ve opted to self deport, no one wants to deport on the government’s terms – going to a detention facility for an undetermined period of time before eventually being deported to a location they don’t want to be.
Another dynamic that’s evident is the length of time in the country. Though mostly anecdotal, those most likely to self-deport thus far were those who entered the country more recently. Preceding the Biden administration 62% of illegal immigrants in this country had lived here for over a decade. This creates a different dynamic for the established illegal immigrants, as opposed to those attempting to game the asylum system under the Biden administration. It will be interesting to see how this dynamic will play out from here.