US President Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations may be coming closer to reality. Until June, deportations had lagged behind immigration arrests and detentions. By the first week of August, deportations reached nearly 1,500 people per day, according to the latest data, a pace not seen since the Obama administration, according to a New York Times report.
With an infusion of cash from Trump’s domestic policy bill signed in July — an extra $76 billion that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can spend over a little more than four years — the agency appears poised to scale its operations even further.
At least 180,000 people have been deported by ICE under Trump so far. At the current higher pace, the agency is on track to deport more than 400,000 people in his first year in office, well more than the 271,000 people ICE removed in the year ending last September but still short of the administration’s stated goal of one million deportations a year.
The Department of Homeland Security says the total number of deportations so far under Trump is much higher — at 332,000. That figure includes people who are turned around or quickly deported at U.S. borders by Customs and Border Protection.
ICE now uses about a dozen charter planes every day to conduct deportations and move detainees around the country, almost twice as many as in January, according to data collected by Tom Cartwright, an immigration advocate who tracks ICE flights. In May, ICE modified its contract with CSI Aviation, its primary air charter company, to increase the number of flights per week. It has also resumed using a limited number of military planes.
ICE’s expanded operations have drawn nationwide protests, fierce backlash and an endless series of legal challenges. But officials have pressed forward with aggressive tactics.
In late May, Stephen Miller, a White House immigration policy adviser, ordered ICE leaders to escalate arrests across the board, even if it meant broadening its focus beyond immigrants with a criminal record. Immigration arrests of people with a past violent criminal conviction increased to about 1,900 in June from about 1,100 in December. At the same time, arrests overall tripled to more than 28,000 and arrests of people with no past conviction or charges increased by almost 20 times.
ICE also intends to expand detention partnerships with state and local governments, like the one for the facility Florida has named ‘Alligator Alcatraz’.
