Trump wants mass deportations, over 1.4 mn face removal

Associated Press

New York: The immigration officers sat in their vehicles before dawn near a two-storey building. A New York subway line rumbled overhead, and then an officer's voice crackled over the radio. After watching for about two hours, he said, “I think that's Tango,” using a term for target. “Gray hoodie. Backpack. Walking quickly.” The immigration officers surrounded and handcuffed a 23-year-old man from Ecuador who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor.

Kenneth Genalo, head of Enforcement and Removal Operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York, said a popular misconception is that officers can sweep into a community and pick up a wide swath of people who are in the United States illegally and send them to their home countries. “It's called targeted enforcement,” Genalo said. “We don't grab people and then take them to JFK and put them on a plane." With Donald Trump returning to the White House, there is intense interest in how the Republican will carry out his immigration agenda, including a campaign pledge of mass deportations. His priorities could run into the realities faced by agents focused on enforcement and removals, including the unit in New York that offered The Associated Press a glimpse into its operations: The number of people already on its lists to target eclipses the number of officers available to do the work.

The Biden administration had narrowed deportation priorities to public safety threats and recent border crossers. Trump's incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, says officials in the new administration also will prioritise those who pose a risk, such as criminals, before moving on to immigrants whom courts have ordered removed from the US. But Homan also has signalled that enforcement could be wider: “If you're in the country illegally you got a problem,” he said recently on Dr. Phil's