“Changes are coming” in how ICE looks to deport illegal immigrants, President Donald Trump vowed Thursday, indicating ICE would renew its focus on violent criminals — a shift that certainly makes sense to us. This is an implicit slapdown of top Trump aide Stephen Miller, who recently thundered that ICE should be deporting 3,000 a day. That’s a quota it can’t possibly meet without doing mass arrests — since tracking down the serious criminals is resource-intensive, but the agency’s budget is still stuck at Biden-era levels until the “big, beautiful bill” becomes law.
In a Truth Social post and later remarks to the press, the prez made it plain he doesn’t want a major effort to deport those who’ve been here illegally for a decade or more. “Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business” say “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them,” Trump acknowledged, even people who’ve “worked for them for 20 years.” “We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense,” the prez concluded.
Right. By some estimates, more than 3 million illegal immigrants have criminal records. That’s enough to be getting on with.
But they’re going to have to figure out some effective approach to the 10 million or so that the Biden crew simply waved in since 2020: That issue moved legal immigrants decisively toward Trump in the last election — in a most unwelcome surprise to open-borders Democrats. It mak.
