Two people familiar with the plans say that the Trump administration is planning to send hundreds more government workers to arrest more undocumented immigrants starting as early as this week. These workers will include Border Patrol agents who will be sent all over the country.
The move, which will likely include help from state National Guard units, comes at the same time that the Justice Department is stepping up its fight against immigration-related crime in cities across the country. These are the latest steps that the administration is taking to try to keep up with President Trump’s campaign promise to deport a lot of people.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, whose job it is to arrest and detain illegal immigrants in the US, have been under a lot of pressure to get things done, but they have had many of the same problems with logistics that have plagued previous governments.
Stephen Miller, who is the deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House, has said that limits on ICE field offices are “a floor, not a ceiling.” But Trump officials have had to ask for help from all over the federal government to carry that out.
US Customs and Border Protection and the Texas National Guard signed an agreement earlier this year that lets some Texas Guard members help with immigration while being supervised by CBP officials.
A CBP spokesperson said at the time of the announcement that a whole-of-government approach to immigration enforcement was important. “Partnerships with committed state governors are vital to that commitment,” the spokesperson said. “This is especially true in a state like Texas, which has faced unprecedented migration challenges in recent years, putting a strain on law enforcement resources and increasing security threats along the border.”
Also, the government has made it clear that it needs help from the states to catch and detain illegal immigrants. Earlier this year, the acting homeland security secretary released a memo that, based on Trump’s executive orders that were meant to stop invasions, said there was a “mass influx” of migrants that should give states more power to police immigration laws.
A lot of the federal government has already been called on by the administration to arrest and detain illegal immigrants, but problems still need to be solved. In the case of ICE, they have enough money for about 40,000 jail beds and about 6,000 immigration agents.
A person with knowledge of the situation told CNN that White House officials have also been pushing the leaders of the Justice Department to step up their fight against illegal immigrants.
To do this, the Justice Department is telling federal officials in more than twenty cities to put some investigations on hold and instead focus on finding and arresting people who are in the country illegally.
After sending a lot of government agents from the FBI, ATF, DEA, and the US Marshals Service to help with immigration enforcement, the department chose 25 cities to focus their efforts on. A person with knowledge says that about 45% of the extra federal effort will be made up of FBI agents.
The New York Times was the first to report on the department’s new rise in multiple cities.
Two other people with knowledge of the matter told CNN that some FBI agents who work in areas that the Trump administration thinks are hotspots for immigration-related crime might be spending as much as a third of their time working on immigration issues. In parts of the country where crimes related to immigration are less widespread, that number could be much lower.
The move makes people wonder how the Justice Department will use its resources to deal with other federal crimes. It also comes at a time when the department is still trying to avoid white-collar crimes like foreign bribery cases.
Attorney General Pam Bondi promised that the department would focus less on going after American businesses and more on going after “cartel enablers and other financial facilitators of transnational crime.” On Monday, Matthew Galeotti, who is in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, announced new rules that make this promise even stronger.