Trump, ICE Briefly Decided Maybe It’s Not A Good Idea To Mass Arrest Employed Migrants… But Then Reversed Course

Legal Issues

from the well-duh dept

For a brief moment, it looked like real life was finally having an effect on Trump’s “immigrants are inherently evil” fantasies. There was a brief window, last week, where Trump indicated he’d roll back some of his deportation goons because it was going too far. The fact that this moment of realization has arrived at all is somewhat of a miracle… though it only lasted all of two or three days, before the racist impulses shot back to the forefront and the Trump regime again ramped up its efforts

Even during Trump’s first term, ICE was having so much trouble finding enough migrants with criminal records to arrest it was resorting to (basically) falsifying records. Trump’s second term, however, amplified this already-impossible ask, with advisers and cabinet members continually demanding ICE arrest more and more people with each passing week.

The unavoidable problem is that there simply aren’t enough dangerous criminals in the country, regardless of their immigration status. Migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. In addition, those seeking to obtain permanent residence are also better at paying taxes and, you know, showing up for work than those lucky enough to be born here.

The thing that has led to nationwide protests against ICE isn’t the alleged removal of gang members, drug traffickers, and other criminals from the US population. It’s the other thing — the necessity created by constantly escalating arrest quotas. ICE agents may be targeting a few known criminals but they’re going to sweep up everyone looking vaguely Latino when performing these arrests.

That’s what people are angry about. But only now are the right people angry about these sweeps and raids. It’s the anger of certain constituents that is now forcing Donald Trump to have second thoughts about his mass deportation program. (Well, it’s probably more accurate to say these are first thoughts. Everything prior to this mostly resembled involuntary responses to bigoted stimuli.)

While this comment is about as articulate as you’d expect from this particular orator, it’s one of the few that actually seems to contain some understanding of issues lying just below the immediate surface:

[A]t a news conference, [Trump] took an uncharacteristically sympathetic tone toward immigrants who work on farms and in the hospitality industry.

“Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years,” he said. “They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.”

He later said that there would be an “order” soon on the matter.

“We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels,” he said. “We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

Exactly. It’s the thing everyone’s been saying! That’s why there are mass protests against ICE and that’s why some supporters of Trump are beginning to question their loyalty.

Now, it’s one thing for Trump to let something fall out of his mouth during an unscripted press conference. It’s quite another for this to result in some sort of administrative action. Implausibly, this realization — likely combined with weeks of anti-ICE sentiment around the nation — has resulted in a pull-back by ICE that roughly reflects the president’s meandering comment on hard-working migrants.

The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.

“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.

The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “noncriminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any crime.

While this sounded promising, everyone pretty much expected that Trump and ICE would reverse course once his inner circle of extremely racist advisors heard about it. And, indeed, that’s exactly what happened:

The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants — a decision that stood at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status.

Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants, according to two people familiar with the call. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.

So much for that brief moment of only slightly saner policy. In originally writing this up (before the about face), I tried to avoid cynicism and support ICE and Trump for coming slightly closer to their senses, if ridiculously late. But all that’s out the window now. The regime is back to destroying more and more of the backbone of the American economy… because racism.

Filed Under: dhs, donald trump, ice, immigration, mass deportation, tatum king