But they want all immigrants out, not just the criminals
The ICE officers descended on Compton, targeting immigrants convicted of theft, child abuse and selling drugs. There were no protesters. No whistles alerting targets to the officers’ presence. No face masks. In some cases, residents opened their doors to let the officers inside their homes. One man thanked them for not arresting him in front of his children.
The Los Angeles area operation ended with 162 arrests, including a Mexican national convicted of rape and a Salvadoran national convicted of voluntary manslaughter. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said almost 90% of the people arrested had criminal convictions.
It was June 2018, more than a year into Donald Trump’s first term as president. Seven years later, carrying out the same operation in L.A. or other U.S. cities feels almost impossible without drawing angry crowds and requiring multiple officers, at times across federal agencies, to detain a single target.
Why? Because Stephen Miller has created the first steps in a strategy of ethnic cleansing and suppression of dissent:
In the years since Trump’s first term, ICE and the government’s immigration enforcement apparatus expanded raids well beyond those against known criminals or suspected ones. Increasingly, immigrants with no criminal records and even legal residents and U.S. citizens found themselves stopped and sometimes arrested.
The uncertainty over who is being targeted has fueled a growing pattern of community protests and rapid response mobilizations, even when officials say they are targeting convicted felons, reflecting a widening gap between how enforcement is described and how it is experienced. That gap has become most visible on the ground.
Gangs of masked men dressed in military gear are rampaging through the cities and intimidating, harassing, brutalizing, assaulting and killing people under color of law. And that was the plan from the very beginning:
Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, is widely seen in the administration as the mastermind of the president’s immigration policy, relentlessly pushing officials to meet goals that he designates on behalf of the president.
His power is evident in his daily 10 a.m. conference calls, including Saturdays, where he demands updates from agencies and exerts pressure on senior officials who deliver less-than-satisfactory results, according to a source familiar.
The call, which a White House official described as a “policy call to ensure interagency coordination,” includes senior leadership of agencies across the administration who are responsible for various aspects of national security and public safety.
And while the call can cover a host of topics, it largely focuses on Trump’s immigration push, a core part of the president’s second-term agenda.
Miller is militant, according to administration sources, in his belief that he must strictly enforce that push. He has been keenly focused on numbers, including how many immigration arrests are being conducted on a given day and how quickly deportations are happening. Last year, he directed ICE officials to meet daily quotas of 3,000 immigration arrests — an unprecedented number that hasn’t yet been met.
The intense White House pressure is felt downstream among agents and officers conducting immigration enforcement operations, resulting in their casting a wide net as to whom they arrest, including those who do not have criminal records.
All you have to do is read Miller’s posts:
His agenda seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? And he is batshit crazy.