Trump Stewing because of Lies Stephen Miller Fed Him During the Campaign
Thus far, Trump’s biggest success on immigration in his second term has been to claim credit — twice! — for things that Sleepy Joe Biden did, in one case years ago.
He threatened sanctions on Colombia, only to agree to let Colombian President Gustavo Petro send planes to fetch deportees, sometimes in Colombian military planes, rather than receive them in US military planes.
He threatened sanctions on Mexico, only to boast after Claudia Sheinbaum committed to put 5,000 fewer Mexican troops on the border than are already there, the same 10,000 that Biden obtained years ago.
He threatened sanctions on Canada, only to boast that Justin Trudeau agreed to the same $1.3 billion in investments to counter fentanyl trafficking he put in place in December.
As for his efforts to round up and deport migrants in the US? Almost two weeks ago, I noted that the quotas ICE introduced to try to boost the deportation numbers fell wildly short of delivering the deportations Trump had promised his rubes, to say nothing of the way those quotas will lead to deportation of non-criminal migrants instead of the violent criminals Trump claims to be targeting. Almost two weeks ago, Trump’s flunkies confessed they would never be able to meet his promises for mass deportation.
The fate of a highly publicized raid in Aurora last week is a spectacular case in point.
On Thursday, shortly after the raid, the Fox News propagandist whose job it is to stoke fear about migration, Bill Melugin, first celebrated the “massive” raid, only later to reveal the raid had resulted in far fewer arrests than promised and just one arrest of a Tren de Aragua member. ICE immediately blamed its failure to detain more people on leaks.
That same day, Tom Homan announced he may have to halt the kind of embed ICE has been all too happy to give Melugin, because of leaks or operational security; he did not say that truthful reports to Fox viewers about his failures gets him in trouble with the boss. Tom Homan can’t afford to have Trump know that this massive raid found only a single Tren de Aragua member.
The raid focused on an apartment complex that had been the focus of a wildly propagandistic Trump campaign event headlined by Stephen Miller last year.
Both reporting sympathetic to migrants and that of mainstream outlets describes what actually happened, why the raid failed to lead to the number of arrests Trump promised: Heavily armed officers swarmed the building and knocked on every door, but after residents didn’t open up, they finally left. (Update: Elevating this really good account of the raid GinnyRED57 put in comments.)
Heavily armed federal agents raided apartment buildings across metro Denver early Wednesday in a search for Venezuelan gang members and other migrants under the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort targeting major cities.
At least two dozen officers carrying high-powered weapons stormed several complexes before sunrise. In some cases, they were backed by large, military-style vehicles.
The Department of Homeland Security said on social media that it was targeting 100 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua for arrest and detention. It did not say how many people were taken into custody.
The operation included officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; and the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives.
[snip]
At an apartment complex in Denver, a 31-year-old Venezuelan man said that shortly after 5 a.m., ICE agents and other federal officers began yelling and loudly banging on every door.
The man, who asked that his name be withheld because he was afraid of being deported, said residents discreetly peered out their windows as large trucks and unmarked vehicles entered the parking lot.
Several residents said eight people were arrested at the complex.
People “hid with fear,” “didn’t open their doors” and remained “quiet without saying anything,” he said after all the agents had left.
In other words, while ICE had a few specific targets, they had no warrants for the vast majority of residences. They just kept knocking and knocking and knocking. And because the residents knew their rights, they didn’t open up.
It’s probably no surprise that this story from NBC is coming out days after the flopped Aurora raid. Trump is angry that his deportation numbers are falling so far short of what he promised his supporters.
Agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement are under increasing pressure to boost the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, as President Donald Trump has expressed anger that the amount of people deported in the first weeks of his administration is not higher, according to three sources familiar with the discussions at ICE and the White House.
A source familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president is getting “angry” that more people are not being deported and that the message is being passed along to “border czar” Tom Homan, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello.
“It’s driving him nuts they’re not deporting more people,” said the person familiar with Trump’s thinking.
[snip]
Meanwhile at ICE, Vitello told agents in January to aim to meet a daily quota of 1,200-1,400 arrests. According to numbers ICE has posted on X, the highest single day total since Trump was inaugurated was just 1,100, and the number has fallen since that day. On Tuesday of this week, arrests of immigrants were over 800, according to a source familiar with the numbers. But last weekend, there were only about 300 arrests, another source told NBC News.
In order to fulfill Trump’s Inauguration Day promise of “millions and millions” of deportations, the Trump administration would have to be deporting over 2,700 immigrants every day to reach 1 million in a year.
And, as NBC News has reported, arrests do not always equal immediate detentions, much less deportations. Of the more than 8,000 immigrants arrested in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, 461 were released, according to the White House.
Of course Trump is pissed that his biggest immigration success so far was stolen from Sleepy Joe Biden.
Of course Tom Homan is pissed that he can’t deliver what he promised.
Of course ICE is squirmy because even if they could meet their quotas — even if those migrants in Aurora, CO against whom ICE had no probable cause of a crime willingly opened their doors so ICE could arrest and deport them — the number of deportees would still fall far short of Trump’s goal.
But this all arises from the false expectations set during the election — from the lies Stephen Miller told, over and over and over and over and over, about the number of criminal migrants.
Trump is furious that his thugs can’t fulfill his promises. But those failures arise not through want of trying. Rather, those failures stem from the fact that reality in no way matches the hellhole Miller pitched for Trump, the imaginary hellhole Miller used to get voters afraid enough to vote for Trump.
Trump has redirected virtually all instruments of US national security to chase Stephen Miller’s lies. Not only is it going to lead to ongoing fury from the Boss, because reality will never match the propaganda Miller spun. But by neglecting the things that really do pose much more urgent threats — by destaffing investigations into real terrorists or operations to counter real ransomware attacks — Trump leaves America vulnerable in myriad ways.