WASHINGTON (AP) — During his Senate confirmation hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told lawmakers his objective for executing President Donald Trump’s large-scale deportation plan was to keep his agency out of newspaper headlines.
To a certain extent, he’s succeeded. The days of viral social media footage showing former Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino confronting demonstrators have ended. While his predecessor Kristi Noem made her inaugural secretary trip to New York City for Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests, Mullin traveled to North Carolina to assess hurricane recovery operations.
The Republican administration seems to be adjusting its strategy for a signature policy that helped return Trump to office, shifting away from confrontational, highly visible enforcement methods toward more discreet operations. However, officials maintain they haven’t abandoned their ambitious deportation targets despite this tactical change.
“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before,” said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. “But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”
Last year, the Trump administration initiated multiple immigration enforcement campaigns primarily in cities controlled by Democrats, resulting in increased arrests through large-scale operations. These crackdowns generated confrontations between demonstrators and enforcement personnel and resulted in the fatal shootings of two American citizens in Minneapolis.
Following these incidents, the president’s strict anti-immigration policies have become less popular among voters, and no new major city-focused operations have been announced, prompting questions about the administration’s approach.
“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.
ICE apprehensions have declined in recent months, with immigration detention numbers falling from approximately 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to Associated Press data.
However, demonstrating ongoing commitment, ICE budget documents indicate plans to remove 1 million individuals during this fiscal year and next, compared to approximately 442,000 people last year. The agency also has substantial funding for its operations, with Congress allocating more than $170 billion to the Department of Homeland Security for Trump’s immigration initiatives last year.
The administration targets detention capacity for roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, more than doubling last year’s average daily ICE detention population. Officials have already increased detention space by acquiring 11 warehouses nationwide.
“They are working really on building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump’s strategy.
“President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.
ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Immigration advocates anticipate the Trump administration will focus more intensively on removing protections for migrants with temporary legal authorization to stay in the U.S. while their cases undergo review.
Demonstrating this approach, green card approvals by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fell by half during a year under the Trump administration, according to Cato Institute analysis, which supports U.S. immigration. Humanitarian visas for refugees and asylum seekers experienced the largest decreases.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler attributed the decline to enhanced applicant screening by the administration.
The Trump administration has also sought to eliminate Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of individuals, with a crucial case about potential executive overreach being considered by the Supreme Court this week.
Advocates view this as messaging designed to intimidate immigrant communities while making more people subject to deportation. This approach also allows the department to function without the public attention generated by workplace raids or residential arrests.
Over the past year, ICE has concentrated on establishing partnerships with jurisdictions nationwide, enabling local and state police to perform expanded immigration enforcement duties, from verifying immigration status of jail inmates to conducting immigration checks during regular traffic stops.
These partnerships, called 287g agreements, have expanded from 135 in 20 states before Trump’s presidency to over 1,400 in 41 states and territories currently.
Several states, particularly Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of local law enforcement cooperation with ICE.
Meissner from MPI said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, will likely emphasize further discussions about municipal and state cooperation with ICE.
“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.
Conservative supporters of increased deportations argue the only effective way to reduce illegal immigration is making employment so difficult for migrants that they voluntarily depart.
The Trump administration has implemented measures to complicate life for undocumented individuals, including restricting public housing eligibility by immigration status, sharing Medicaid data with ICE, and requiring undocumented individuals to register with federal authorities.
Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies suggested the Social Security Administration could notify employers when employee names don’t match Social Security numbers. Authorities could conduct regular audits of I-9 employment eligibility forms that companies must complete for new employees. Banks could be required to collect citizenship information from customers.
Regardless of future strategy, the administration faces significant pressure to maintain its objectives.
“The numbers are too low,” said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.
“The deportation numbers are just too low,” Howell said, “and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”
