Trump’s mass deportation agenda has reached a crossroads with the Department of Homeland Security changing its leadership

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security will soon be under new management, an opportunity to reset President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda or double down on his campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history.

The White House political director recently encouraged party lawmakers during a retreat at the Republican president’s golf club in Florida to focus on immigration enforcement against criminals, a centerpiece of the mass deportation agenda he ran on. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the aggressive operations created an “obstacle” for the party, which is now embarking on a “course correction.”

However, all signs suggest that Trump’s mass deportation operation has not stopped, but rather intensified, with billions of dollars spent to hire Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, build warehouse detention sites, and meet the administration’s goal of detaining and removing about 1 million immigrants from the United States this year.

“We’re at an interesting moment where this is an inflection point — the public is finally seeing what mass incarceration and mass deportation mean,” said Sarah Mehta, who is following the case at the ACLU.

“This is not an agency that is slowing down,” she said. “They are already moving forward with some of the harshest policies.”

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White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the president’s policies pushed migrants out of the United States, either through forced deportation or on their own, and closed the border between the United States and Mexico.

“No one is changing the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda,” she added.

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The questions put Homeland Security at a crossroads. Secretary Kristi Noem is on her way out, and Trump’s nominee to replace her, Sen. Markwayne Mullen of Oklahoma, will appear this week for Senate confirmation hearings.

After massive deportations in Minneapolis and other cities — and the killing of at least three American citizens at the hands of officers — Democratic lawmakers are refusing to provide routine funding unless the department changes its policies.

At the same time, those who believe Trump won the White House with his mass deportation agenda are disappointed that the administration did not achieve its goals last year and insist he must do better.

“There’s been a lot of talk in Congress and now in the White House about kind of rolling back the mass deportation promise that President Trump, candidate Trump, made,” said Rosemary Jenks, co-founder of the Immigration Accountability Project, which advocates for deportations.

“We think now is an opportunity,” she said. “We have to raise the deportation numbers.”

A nation of immigrants no longer?

This discussion is taking place as the United States marks its 250th anniversary and commemorates its founding as a nation of immigrants with images of masked federal agents smashing car windows and detaining people suspected of being in the United States without proper legal status.

Congress, controlled by Republicans, provided about $170 billion in the tax cuts bill last year to support these efforts, more than three times ICE’s budget.

In a fiery speech, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri pushed back against the restrictions proposed by Democrats. “This question about deporting illegal immigrants was on the ballot. President Trump was not shy,” he said. “And the American people support the idea that we are going to deport people.”

However, there are signs of cracks in Trump’s coalition. Some Republicans favor what some call a more humane approach, and they share their views with Mullen.

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Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a staunch advocate against illegal immigration, said immigrants in his state milk most of the dairy cows, and he has heard from restaurant groups that rely on immigrants to fill jobs.

“Can we turn back the clock and get all these people who came here illegally back home?” he asked.

“In terms of actually implementing that, it’s much more difficult — especially, actually, when you realize that a lot of these people, most of them, came here looking for opportunity, and they want freedom,” he said. “They work, support their families, and contribute to organizations and the community.”

The mass deportation group wants more

The Mass Deportation Alliance, a group of conservative organizations including the Heritage Foundation and Erik Prince, founder of security firm Blackwater, recently formed to keep the administration on track.

He calls last year’s focus on deporting violent criminal immigrants “Phase One” and says “Phase Two” this year should focus on deporting immigrants beyond those with violent criminal histories.

That doesn’t mean mobile patrols through Home Depot parking lots, said Mark Morgan, who served as acting head of Immigration, Customs and Border Protection during Trump’s first term and is part of the coalition. He said it was a matter of strategic enforcement focused on migrants in work sites, those who have overstayed their visas and whom a judge has already ordered deported.

But they face opposition from within the Republican Party, Morgan said, especially from those who want to narrow the scope of deportation to mainly criminals and from business groups that want to relax law enforcement at work sites.

“Republicans who say their definition of targeted enforcement is just criminal are wrong. They’re on the wrong side of this,” he added.

“That’s why you see some of the base actually becoming apoplectic because they’re saying, ‘Wait a minute.’ You’re only talking about removing criminals now?” “That’s not what you promised,” Morgan said.

What comes next

Deportation advocates as well as those working to protect immigrants’ rights argue that the Trump administration’s best chance to achieve its goals is to create an environment so unwelcoming for immigrants that they just leave — often called self-deportation.

Mehta, of the ACLU, expects the administration to step up efforts to end temporary permits that allow immigrants to remain in the United States — especially refugees and asylum seekers — while their cases make their way through the system. She described this as “a deliberate attempt to make people unregistered – to remove legal status – and then the ability to enforce the law against them.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said he fears more nonviolent immigrants will be arrested to fill new warehouses being prepared as the Trump administration tries to meet deportation goals.

This is unacceptable, he said, and is among “the key questions Senator Mullen will have to answer at his confirmation hearing.”