After 10 months of escalating immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that the agency will become even more aggressive in its pursuit of that agenda next year.
Thomas Homan says that he wants to see a dramatic increase in the targeting of businesses hiring undocumented immigrants to work for them in 2018, as well as launching community raids to capture individuals who live in so-called sanctuary cities, where officials refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Immigration arrests in the interior of the US have increased by as much as 40% in 2017, which Homan says is the result of the President’s tougher stance.
Arrests in the US interior began dropping under President Barack Obama’s administration, as implemented policies meant that undocumented immigrants who had not committed any other criminal offenses were no longer priorities. During the last fiscal year, arrests in St Paul alone reached 4,175, an increase on the 2,500 recorded the previous year. Eight percent of the total national immigrant arrests were immigrants apprehended when ICE agents had been targeting other people.
Homan says that the majority of such cases took place in sanctuary cities, where agents were searching for individuals who had been allowed to leave jails despite agency requests. Homan was unapologetic about that, and about the targeting of immigrants with final deportation orders, regardless how long they had spent in the US.