The Trump administration boasts the hard hand with which it has guided immigration policy in its first 100 days. Being perhaps his main more visible achievement, the president has highlighted the reduction of 95% of the daily irregular crosses on the border with Mexico. The flow of South American migrants has stopped, since the transit of people has also collapsed through the Darién jungle, an important step to follow the path towards the United States. The president, who will celebrate the brand with a mass bath in Michigan, has already deported about 142,000 people and sets as a goal to overcome Joe Biden, who expelled more immigrants than Trump in his first presidency (1.5 million). “It’s just the beginning,” said the administration as a warning.
The government is already beginning to reveal some keys of what comes in the coming weeks. Tom Homan, the Tsar of La Frontera, said Monday that “in the very close future” migrants and foreigners arrested by federal agencies will be taken to the Fort Bliss military base, in El Paso (Texas). In mid -April, the White House instructed the Pentagon to initiate the conversion of land use of thousands of hectares of a strip that covers parts of California, Arizona and New Mexico. This would turn irregular crosses to this area into a federal crime. The Defense Department is studying the viability of the proposal, according to the AP.
Homan has repeatedly complained about the lack of space in the detention centers. The official has been imploring to Congress an increase in the budget to expand the accommodation capabilities of these prisons, many operated by the private sector. The National Security Department said in the beginning of April that the capacity of the 140 centers throughout the country was at its maximum capacity, hosting 48,000 individuals. It is the largest figure in the last five years and is 17% above the system capabilities.
The government has arrested 158,000 undocumented in its first 100 days. The authorities say that within these apprehensions there are about 2,288 gang members such as the Venezuelan Train of Aragua (600 detainees) and the MS-13 and the 18th neighborhood, linked to the Mara Salvatrucha, and others. In his early hours in the Oval Office, Trump added these criminal groups to the list of international terrorist organizations, which in practice gave the authorities more resources to fight against them.
The Customs Immigration and Control Service (ICE) has had a prominent role in this Trumpism 2.0 starter period. The agency has become the police arm that has arrested and processed for deportation to almost 66,000 people. According to the agency, three out of four detainees had a criminal record. Some 1,300 had committed sexual crimes and about 500 had been accused or sentenced by homicide.
The government ensures that ICE has stopped “the worst of the worst.” But these months have left many questions in the ways such as ICE agents have acted. The relatives of some of the 300 Venezuelans and Salvadorans taken, first to Guantanamo and then to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, have denounced that the undocumented apprehended had no serious crimes in their files. Some even had a clean record.
ICE recognizes that among their detainees there are some with minor offenses, such as traffic fines or road incidents. Some 6,300 people have been arrested for drunk or intoxicated. Another 9,600 were captured for having open charges for some kind of aggression. And another 1,500 people were arrested for illegal possession of weapons.
“We have returned to 65,000 illegal foreigners to several countries of the world,” said Todd Lyons, the interim director of ICE, through a statement. The Executive is now freeing a war against the Sanctuary cities so that they provide the support of their security forces in the capture operations of the undocumented. In this way, Washington intends to remove obstacles to increase the network that ICE and other agencies have tended.
The Ministry of National Security has also arrested a thousand undocumented workers in raids made in several places. The federal agents arrested eleven undocumented people from Mexico, Nicaragua and Ecuador who were working on the construction of a port at Lake Charles in Louisiana. In February they arrested about 16 people in an operation carried out in a New Jersey winery.
The National Security Criminal Investigation Agency ensures that the thousand detainees is the highest registered figure, and that arrests will continue to increase in the coming months. The federal authorities have fined some 1,200 businesses for consciously using roles. The figure of these fines brushes the million dollars. It is the most recent balance of the war that Trump libra against immigrants.