‘We need to find these people’: L.A. immigration raids a sign of what’s to come, officials say

Washington – When Donald Trump promised on the campaign track to release the largest expulsion campaign in the history of the United States, he declared that his second administration would begin by continuing people with legal records.

But now, disappointed with the rhythm of arrests, the Trump administration throws a wider net by targeting any person deportable.

Raids in California took place in the courthouses, during the checks provided with the immigration authorities, in clothing factories, house deposits, car washing, farms and external churches. But those responsible say that the state is hardly chosen. The raids also arrive for other jurisdictions of the sanctuary, said Tom Homan, chief advisor to President Trump on border policy.

“This operation is not going to end,” he told Times.

Throughout the country, immigration and the application of American customs intensified new strategies and demolishes the previous one to respond to requests from the White House. Homan has recognized that the pace of deportations had not met expectations and that, although the administration always favors the withdrawal of those who threaten public security and national security, anyone in the country illegally is a fair game.

“I’m not satisfied with the figures,” he said. “We have to find these people.”

Arrests are underway in places previously considered as limits, and the administration earlier this year has canceled a policy which prohibits the measures responsible for law in hospitals, schools or worship homes. Agents who generally focus on drugs and human trafficking see their functions go to the application of immigration.

The government also calls on the public to help find and expel the people of the country without authorization. The Ministry of Internal Security, the ICE parental agency, published a poster On social networks this week, Uncle Sam urged people to call a hotline to “report all foreign invaders”.

And in Los Angeles, the National Guard and the US Marines were mobilized without the consent of state leaders and local leaders – a tactic that Trump administration officials said could be repeated elsewhere. Trump said that the deployments had been effective – “Los Angeles would be a crime scene as we have not seen it for years,” said Trump on Thursday – but local leaders said that demonstrations against ice raids had not become out of control and that Trump’s actions were only doing tensions.

While the demonstrations reached their seventh day in Los Angeles, isolated incidents of violence have decreased, although certain tensions have remained. Despite this, the deputy chief of staff of the White House Stephen Miller wrote on Wednesday on x that “America voted for mass deportations. Violent insurrectionists and the politicians who allow them, try to reverse the results of the elections. ”

California Democrats claim that implementing measures concern reprisals against the State for its policies that protect the residents of immigrants, as well as an attempt to distract the public from the attempts of the Congress Republicans to adopt the president’s tax and expenses, which would add more than $ 150 billion for immigration and the application of borders. They say that the president tests the limits of his authority and wants spiral protests to be absent more by invoking the insurrection law to establish martial law.

To invoke the Insurrection Act would allow military troops to arrest civilians.

“It is roughly if he bleeds, he leads,” said representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles). “He therefore created and made violence so that he can have a television program. But other people – elderly people, disabled, young people – will bleed when Medicaid is cut, when people are expelled from their homes.”

While public attention has focused on employee arrests, the administration says that it also envisages employers who illegally hire workers in the country.

“It is not only a question of stopping illegal foreigners, it is also a question of holding responsible employers – but there is a burden of evidence,” said Homan. “If we can prove it, then we will act.”

A former head of internal security of the Biden administration said that immigration laws could be applied without increasing public tension. “Why don’t they do [more] I-9 audits instead of simply continuing people? Said the former official, Deborah Fleischaker, of forms used to verify the identity and eligibility of an employee to work in the United States “there are ways to do so in a less disruptive and quieter way. They choose the most aggressive way. »»

In many ways, the current immigration repression reflects exactly what Trump said in the presidential campaign when he said that millions of people are expelled.

The new expansive approach seems to be a response to a meeting at the end of May, first reported by the Washington examinerIn which Miller castigated dozens of senior ice officials, asking them: “Why are you not at Home Depot? Why are you not at 7-Eleven?”

“Well, now they are suddenly at home deposits,” said Fleischaker.

Homan said the agency had recently stopped around 2,000 people a day, against an average of 657 arrests reported by the agency during the first 100 days of Trump. The increase is reflected in the increase in detention figures, which have exceeded 50,000 for the first time since the first presidency of Trump, according to Trac, a research organization on non -partisan data.

Asked about complaints of overcrowding and lower quality conditions in detention facilities, Homan has recognized that certain installations are overcrowded during the plug. Some of the immigrants detained in California since Friday have been transferred to other states, he said.

“California has been quite strict and they want to stop immigration detention,” he said. “This does not mean that we are publishing these people. The less we have a detention space in California, the more they take measures so as not to help us with detention beds, then we simply keep them away from the state.”

The work of immigration agents – sometimes hours of surveillance for one person – can be slow. Jason Houser, who was the head of staff of the ICE under the Biden administration, said that police officers, when they have received quotas, will always find the easiest way to make them.

Miller, he said, knows that Ice “does not have enough resources or staff to bring them to a million moves” by the end of the year.

Houser said that it was there that military troops come into play. Huser predicted that soldiers could soon start to manage the arrests.

Critics of administration tactics, including former internal security officials, said that the White House strategy was summed up with frightening immigrants from themselves. It costs a few hundred dollars a day to have an immigrant; The deportation can cost thousands of people and certain countries are reluctant to accept the return of their citizens.

“They stop one, they scare 10,” said a former senior ice official. “It’s a victory.”

The former official, who asked not to be appointed to speak freely, said that it was a subject of the Biden administration, during which the agents responded to the lawyers and the previous one.

“Everything has been checked and verified … to the detriment in some respects of the agency,” said the former official. “But to see them do what they want when they want, it’s a bit surprising and it’s like, look at all the things we could have done if we had this attitude. But they seem to have so little respect for the consequences, the proceedings, the media, public opinion – they have no constraints.”

Homan said that the demonstrations in Los Angeles have made more dangerous implementation measures but did not prevent the agents from making as much as expected.

“If the demonstrators think they will prevent us from doing our job, that is not true,” he said. “We will probably increase operations in sanctuary cities because we owe it.”