The plan wasn’t working. Less than a year into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration’s signature initiative — facilitating the mass deportation of “millions and millions” of immigrants, as he once put it — had become a political liability. A surge of federal agents to Minnesota proved to be the apex of a flashy, combative strategy that tried to steamroll any opposition — and failed.
But now, according to The New York Times, the seeming lull in arrests that followed the winter’s chaos has given way to a renewed effort to round up as many immigrants for deportation as possible — without drawing the same level of attention. The shift shows both the limits that the administration has faced in its deportation spree and its determination to continue apace despite the president’s approval ratings on immigration tanking. Without the same amount of spotlight-seeking from immigration officials, however, the White House hopes to deny opponents the clear targets to organize against that last year’s deportation campaigns provided.
When the Trump administration retreated from Minnesota in February, it left behind two dead Americans, killed by federal agents while protesting the show of force in their communities. Six months later, Markwayne Mullin has replaced Kristi Noem atop the Department of Homeland Security. Mullin has rejected many of Noem’s most eye-catching tactics: Gone are the announcements of major operations in Democratic-controlled cities, the photo ops with tactical gear, the videos from former Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino.
In its place, the Times reported, is a new push to hit a new set of quotas for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to meet. And unlike previous demands from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, it seems that ICE has been on track to hit those numbers. Over the course of last week, according to the Times, federal officials detained more than 10,000 people — and intends to keep that pressure going:
ICE officers have arrested people at check-ins with immigration authorities, during traffic stops and on the street. The push has apparently yielded results, with recent arrest numbers roughly doubling from the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year.
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.
As I argued in March, when the previous strategy’s failings were still fresh, Miller’s determination to purge the country of immigrants was unlikely to be deterred for long. Boosting arrest numbers to 2,000 a day is still short of the 3,000 daily arrests he demanded last year. But even this downgraded ask still reflects how much of a priority this campaign remains among the administration’s many struggles.
Meanwhile, Mullin has shed many of the high-profile episodes that helped organizers to rally the public to their cause. The black helicopter raids that galvanized attention and criticism have been replaced with less showy but no less harrowing operations. The warehouses that his predecessor purchased to convert into detention centers are being placed back on the market. This leaves the existing overcrowded facilities to be stuffed further but doesn’t add new sites for locals — in both blue and red states — to reject.
The shying away from public confrontations represents a rarity from the Trump administration: the ability to learn from mistakes.
The new surge also comes after yet another influx of cash from Congress for ICE and the Border Patrol. The Times reported that “top ICE officials were told to make sure that as many officers as possible were working seven days a week, and to put 80 percent of their officers on arrest operations.” The pace may not be sustainable in the long-term, but the funding — $70 billion in cash over the next three years, on top of the roughly $170 billion over the next four years from last year’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — can pay for a lot of new recruits and even more overtime pay.
The shying away from public confrontations represents a rarity from the Trump administration: the ability to learn from mistakes. By keeping their deportation efforts under the radar, it’s harder for the fears within the immigrant community to spread to the broader population. It has likewise hampers the efforts of activists, lawyers and organizers to sustain the pressure that led to ICE’s previous retreat.
The challenge then becomes preventing the general population from believing that the clashes in Minnesota were a decisive victory for immigrant rights. The fight continues, with the administration having swapped out a militarized approached with a less aesthetically alarming crackdown. And after the Supreme Court granted the White House new license to transform legal immigrants into undocumented immigrants, there will be plenty of people for ICE to quietly target for removal.
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