ICE Arrested 10,000 People in Five Days After the White House Demanded Bigger Numbers

After federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during an unprecedented immigration crackdown in Minneapolis this past January, ICE quietly dialed back its splashy street operations. That restraint didn’t last. Internal documents show the White House pushed the agency to hit a new daily arrest target, and ICE more than doubled its pace in a matter of days—even sweeping up a nun on her way to Mass along with immigrants who had no criminal record and were seemingly following the rules.

The New York Times reports:

Federal immigration officials have detained more than 10,000 people in the last five days, a major surge that has stemmed from a push within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase arrest rates. Agency leaders in recent days ordered top ICE officials to focus more of their officers’ efforts on picking up immigrants they want to deport. … ICE officers have arrested people at check-ins with immigration authorities, during traffic stops and on the street. ...

ICE officials were told that the White House wanted an increase in arrests, according to three officials with knowledge of the conversations. One of the officials said that it was unclear how long the pace could continue, but that ICE officials had been told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement. ...

In South Texas, Sister Letty Ugboaja, a Nigerian nun, was arrested on her way to church on Sunday morning, according to Sister Norma Pimentel, her colleague. Sister Letty is a local nurse who also helps at a parish in the region. Sister Norma called local leaders after learning of the arrest, and congressional officials soon got involved and pushed for her release. On Sunday, she was let go from ICE custody, and Sister Norma was there to greet her. Sister Norma said that Sister Letty was distraught upon her release. “It took her awhile to be able to talk — she was crying,” she said.

None of the people named in the Times’s piece—a nun, a nurse, a father with a court date already scheduled for 2027, a man driving to a soccer game—were accused of violence or anything coming anywhere near the public-safety threats normally invoked to justify immediate enforcement. Their underlying immigration statuses may differ in ways that matter legally, but none of that actually impacted who got swept up. And, of course, that’s precisely what a quota facilitates; it pulls in anyone who can help hit the target—who they actually are is an afterthought.

Except, as we’ve come to understand, “afterthought” may be too generous to apply to this administration. Senior White House aides have spoken openly about reversing immigration-driven demographic change. Stephen Miller, the right’s point person on purges, could not be more forthright about his desires for mass-scale deportation of immigrants. That’s why, for this movement, a policy that rewards volume over judgment isn’t an unintended side effect. It’s actually the mechanism that lets agents pursue a nativist vision of the country while justifying it through quota fulfillment.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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