By Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Migrant workers picked up at a well-known Italian restaurant in San Diego. A high school volleyball player detained and held for deportation after a traffic stop in Massachusetts. Courthouse arrests of people who entered the U.S. legally and were not hiding.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been intensifying efforts in recent weeks to deliver on Republican President Donald Trump’s promise of record-level deportations.
The White House has demanded the agency sharply increase arrests of migrants in the U.S. illegally, sources have told Reuters. That has meant changing tactics to achieve higher quotas of 3,000 arrests per day, far above the earlier target of 1,000 per day.
Community members and Democrats have pushed back, arguing that ICE is targeting people indiscriminately and stoking fear.
Tensions boiled over in Los Angeles over the weekend when protesters took to the streets after ICE arrested migrants at Home Depot stores, a garment factory and a warehouse, according to migrant advocates.
“It seems like they’re just arresting people they think might be in the country without status and amenable to deportation,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
The apparent shift further undercuts the Trump administration message that they are focused on the “worst of the worst” criminal offenders, and suggests they are pursuing more people solely on the basis of immigration violations.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, told Reuters in late May that the administration had deported around 200,000 people over four months. The total lags deportations during a similar period under former President Joe Biden, who faced higher levels of illegal immigration and quickly deported many recent crossers.
ICE’s operations appeared to intensify after Stephen Miller, a top White House official and the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, excoriated senior ICE officials in a late May meeting over what he said were insufficient arrests.
During the meeting, Miller said ICE should pick up any immigration offenders and not worry about targeted operations that focus on criminals or other priorities for deportation, three people familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity to share the details.
Miller said ICE should target stores where migrant workers often congregate, such as the home improvement retailer Home Depot and 7-Eleven convenience stores, two of the people said.
The message was “all about the numbers, not the level of criminality,” one of the people said.
Miller did not seem to be taking into account the complexities of immigration enforcement, one former ICE official said.
In Los Angeles, for example, a 2024 court decision limits ICE’s ability to knock on doors to make immigration arrests and local law enforcement does not cooperate fully with federal immigration authorities.
“The numbers they want are just not possible in a place like L.A. unless you go to day laborer sites and arrest every illegal alien,” the former ICE official said.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson defended Trump’s enforcement push.
“If you are present in the United States illegally, you will be deported,” she said in a statement to Reuters. “This is the promise President Trump made to the American people and the administration is committed to keeping it.”
A DHS spokesperson said ICE officers executed criminal search warrants at the restaurant in San Diego; that the high school volleyball player in Massachusetts was subject to deportation; and that courthouse arrests were aimed at speeding up removals of migrants who entered under Biden.
ARRESTED AT CHECK-INS
On Sunday, more than a hundred people gathered outside the jail in Butler County, Ohio, to protest the detention of Emerson Colindres, 19, a standout soccer player from Honduras who graduated from high school in May.
Colindres, who has been in the U.S. since he was 8 years old, was being monitored via an ICE “alternatives to detention” program that uses cell phone calls, ankle bracelets and other devices to track people.
He received a text message to come in for an appointment last week and was taken into custody on arrival.
Colindres was ordered deported after his family’s asylum claim was denied, but he had been appearing for regular check-ins and had a pending visa application, his mother, Ada Baquedano, said in an interview.
“They want to deport him, but he knows nothing about our country,” she said. “He’s been here since he was very little.”
The DHS spokesperson said Colindres had a final deportation order and that too many people with such orders had previously been placed on alternatives to detention.
“If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen,” the spokesperson said.
The Migration Policy Institute’s Gelatt said detaining people at ICE check-ins will help the agency boost arrest numbers. But these are often people who are already cooperating with ICE and could cost more to detain.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Ross Colvin and Stephen Coates)
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