President Trump is shaking up leadership in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a feud escalates within the administration over enforcement priorities.
As reported by Fox News, ICE leaders in major cities are being forced out as frustration mounts with the pace of Trump's promised mass deportations. In an unusual move, Border Patrol officials are being tapped to lead interior immigration enforcement, which is usually ICE's job.
According to Fox, Department of Homeland Security insiders are divided over how broad Trump's immigration crackdown should be.
While ICE has focused on known illegal aliens, Border Patrol has cast a wider net, with agents making aggressive shows of force at target-rich locations like Home Depot.
“ICE started off with the worst of the worst, knowing every target they are hitting, but since Border Patrol came to LA in June, we’ve lost our focus, going too hard, too fast, with limited prioritization,” one senior DHS official told Fox. “It’s getting numbers, but at what cost?”
The ICE directors in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Portland, Philadelphia, El Paso and New Orleans have all been sacked, Fox reported. As many as half of ICE's 25 field offices could be shaken up by the purge, NBC reported.
Insiders told Fox that Border Czar Tom Homan and ICE Director Todd Lyons want to target illegal aliens with criminal records - the so-called "worst of the worst."
But Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, and Corey Lewandowski, Noem's chief of staff and Trump's former 2016 campaign manager, are pushing to round up as many illegal aliens as possible. Pressure to ramp up deportations has also come from Stephen Miller, Trump's White House deputy chief of staff and a famous immigration hawk, who set a goal of 3,000 arrests per day in May.
Bovino and Lewandoski have compiled a list of a dozen ICE directors who are facing reassignment as arrest numbers lag around 1,178 on average per day as of late September, NBC reported. The administration has downplayed reports of a rift.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “The president’s entire team is working in lockstep to implement the President’s policy agenda, and the tremendous results from securing the border to deporting criminal illegal aliens speak for themselves.”
The increasingly prominent role of Border Patrol in ICE leadership suggests that the administration is shifting toward a more aggressive approach, as Trump's base demands more action to remove illegal aliens.
“The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” one of the DHS officials told NBC. “So CBP will do it.”
Bovino has been highly visible as the head of Trump's immigration crackdown in Chicago, Operation Midway Blitz, which has faced a violent backlash in the streets. A federal judge has ordered Bovino to appear in court every day to justify agents' crowd control tactics, including the use of tear gas. DHS officials have said Bovino was hit in the head with a rock.
Trump has frequently been accused of breaking a pledge to target the "worst of the worst," but Trump campaigned on carrying out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history.
As one agent put it to Fox News, “What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself — anyone in the US illegally is on the table.”
