‘We need to find these people': L.A. immigration raids a sign of what's to come, officials say
WASHINGTON — When Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to unleash the largest deportation campaign in U.S history, he said his second administration would start by going after people with criminal records.
But now, disappointed with the pace of arrests, the Trump administration is following through on his campaign promise: targeting anyone deportable.
Raids in California have taken place at courthouses, during scheduled check-ins with immigration authorities, at clothing factories, Home Depots, car washes, farms and outside churches. But officials say the state is hardly being singled out. Raids are coming for other sanctuary jurisdictions, too, said Tom Homan, President Trump's chief advisor on border policy.
'This operation is not going to end,' he told The Times.
Across the country, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is stepping up new strategies and tearing down precedent to meet the White House's demands. Homan acknowledged the pace of deportations had not met expectations and that while the administration still prioritizes removing those who threaten public safety and national security, anyone in the country illegally is fair game.
'I'm not happy with the numbers,' he said. 'We need to find these people.'
Arrests are being made in places previously considered off limits, and the administration earlier this year rescinded a policy that prohibited enforcement actions in hospitals, schools or houses of worship. Agents who typically focus on drug and human trafficking are seeing their duties shifted to immigration enforcement.
The government is also now appealing to the public to help find and deport people in the country without authorization. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, released a poster on social media this week that depicts Uncle Sam urging people to call a hotline to 'report all foreign invaders.'
And in Los Angeles, the National Guard and U.S. Marines were mobilized without the consent of state and local leaders — a tactic that Trump administration officials said could be repeated elsewhere. Trump claimed the deployments have been effective — 'Los Angeles would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years,' Trump said Thursday — but local leaders have said the protests against ICE raids had not gotten out of control and that Trump's actions only inflamed tensions.
As protests reached their seventh day in Los Angeles, incidents of violence lessened, though some tensions remained. Even so, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote Wednesday on X that 'America voted for mass deportations. Violent insurrectionists, and the politicians who enable them, are trying to overthrow the results of the election.'
California Democrats say the enforcement actions are about retribution against the state for its policies that protect immigrant residents, as well as an attempt to distract the public from congressional Republicans' attempts to pass the president's tax-and-spending bill, which would add more than $150 billion for immigration and border enforcement. They say the president is testing the bounds of his authority and wants protests to spiral so that he can crack down further by invoking the Insurrection Act to establish martial law.
Invoking the Insurrection Act would allow military troops to arrest civilians. Further unrest, Trump critics say, would be welcomed by the president.
'This is about if it bleeds, it leads,' said Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles). 'So he has created and manufactured violence so that he can have a show on the television. But other people — older people, folks who are disabled, young people — are going to be bleeding when Medicaid gets cut, when people are evicted from their homes.'
While public attention has focused on the arrests of employees, the administration says it's also looking at employers who hire workers in the country illegally.
'It's not just about arresting illegal aliens, it's about holding employers responsible too — but there's a burden of proof,' Homan said. 'If we can prove it, then we'll take action.'
One former Homeland Security official in the Biden administration said immigration laws could be enforced without escalating public tension. 'Why aren't they doing I-9 audits instead of just going after people?' said the former official, Deborah Fleischaker, of forms used to verify an employee's identity and eligibility to work in the U.S. 'There are ways to do this in ways that are less disruptive and calmer. They are choosing the more aggressive way.'
In many ways, the current immigration crackdown reflects exactly what Trump said during the presidential campaign, when he declared that millions of people would be deported.
The new expansive approach appears to be a response to a late May meeting, first reported by the Washington Examiner, in which Miller lambasted dozens of senior ICE officials, asking them 'Why aren't you at Home Depot? Why aren't you at 7-Eleven?'
'Well, now they're all of a sudden at Home Depots,' Fleischaker said.
Homan said the agency has recently arrested around 2,000 people a day, up from a daily average of 657 arrests reported by the agency during Trump's first 100 days back in office. The increase is reflected in rising detention numbers, which have topped 50,000 for the first time since trump's first presidency, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization.
Asked about complaints of overcrowding and substandard conditions in detention facilities, Homan acknowledged some facilities are overcrowded during intake. Some of the immigrants detained in California since Friday have been transferred to other states, he said.
'California has been pretty stringent and they want to shut down immigration detention,' he said. 'It doesn't mean we're releasing these people. The less detention space we have in California, the more action they take in not helping us with detention beds, then we'll just simply move them out of state.'
The work of immigration agents — sometimes hours of surveillance for a single target — can be slow. Jason Houser, who was ICE's chief of staff under the Biden administration, said law enforcement agents, when given quotas, will always find the easiest way to fulfill them.
Miller, he said, knows ICE 'doesn't have enough resources or staff to get them to a million removals' by the end of the year.
Houser said that's where the military troops come in. Homeland Security officials said military personnel already have the authority to temporarily detain anyone who attacks an immigration agent until law enforcement can arrest them. Houser predicted that soldiers could soon begin handling arrests.
Critics of the administration's tactics, including former Homeland Security officials, said the White House's strategy boils down to frightening immigrants into leaving on their own. It costs a few hundred dollars a day to detain an immigrant; deportation can cost thousands, and some countries are reticent to accept the return of their citizens.
'They arrest one, they scare 10,' said one former senior ICE official. 'That's a win.'
The former official, who asked not to be named in order to speak freely, said that's an about-face from the Biden administration, during which agents answered to lawyers and precedent.
'Everything was vetted and vetted … to the detriment in some ways of the agency,' the former official said. 'But to see them just doing whatever they want when they want, it's a little stunning and it's like, look at all the things we could've done if we had that attitude. But they seem to have so little regard for consequences, lawsuits, media, public opinion — they have no constraints.'
Homan said protests in Los Angeles have made enforcement actions more dangerous but have not prevented agents from making as many arrests as planned.
'If the protesters think they're going to stop us from doing our job, it's not true,' he said. 'We're going to probably increase operations in sanctuary cities, because we have to.'
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