Federal agents block people protesting ICE raid near Camarillo, California | Getty
A new Trump administration statement bragging about its immigration “victories” since taking office — including a 93% “plunge” in daily border encounters — also reveals that the Department of Homeland Security is adding 18,000 federal immigration agents to its already bulging army.
The hiring frenzy represents the largest one-time increase since 9/11, and includes 10,000 new ICE agents, 5,000 new customs officers, and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents. The buildup is concentrated most heavily in ICE, which currently has about 15,000 federal agents. In other words, ICE is getting a 67% increase in its federal agent head count!
One might ask why the federal apparatus requires such a frantic buildup when it is at the same time trumping things like, on June 28, the Border Patrol having recorded only 136 apprehensions across the entire Southwest Border — the lowest single-day total in agency history. Or that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had its lowest number of nationwide encounters in June. Or that the number of nationwide apprehensions last month was also a historic low
Homeland security says it has arrested more than 300,000 “illegal aliens” this year, 70 percent of them with criminal charges or convictions.
The so-called Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4th, authorizes this new army of immigration authorities. It also authorizes over $65 billion in increased spending to finish the border wall and pay for some 80,000 new beds for Immigration and Customs Enforcements (ICE) to incarcerate detainees.
The bill also includes authorization for homeland security to offer $10,000 signing bonuses to attract young men and women to join the other American brownshirts. So much for patriotic masses yearning to get into the ranks.
In reality, homeland security is increasingly alienated from Americans, as evidenced by its increasingly hostile press releases that seem to view the public as an insurgency to be subdued.
Screenshot of July 17 post on Custom and Border Protection’s official Instagram account
Just this week, homeland posted to its official X account posted the 1872 John Gast painting “American Progress,” an allegorical depiction of manifest destiny as an angelic, fair skinned woman in robes chasing off native Americans westward with the caption: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”
With messaging like that, it’s not hard to see why so many of the anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles this summer said they regarded the immigration crackdown as an attack on their ethnic heritage.
Actual post on the Department of Homeland Security’s official X account
Homeland security’s breach with the American public is perhaps shown most vividly in the new policy of federal immigration agents masking themselves for even petty arrests, or in the their agencies’ PR machine blurring their faces in the endless stream of press releases portraying them as valiant heroes.
They act as though they’re arresting El Chapo.
ICE agents in Dallas arrest man accused of making social media threats against homeland secretary Kristi Noem
Their efforts at obscuring themselves, including even which agency they’re working for, is antithetical to domestic operations and any sense of service to America and has led to confusion with their partners in the National Guard, as I’ve previously reported.
There’s been a pretty significant decline in support for Trump’s immigration policies, which tells an interesting story that’s getting overlooked. American opposition to “illegal immigration,” if you take a careful look at the polling, mostly only applies to major illegality, like felonies or violent crimes. Misdemeanor-level offenses like residing here without a visa, while technically illegal, is not something most Americans think justifies deportation. These kinds of nuances in public opinion are seldom mentioned, with “illegal immigration” collapsed into one undifferentiated category.
The collapse in support for the deportation regime reflects the realization by many that it isn’t only targeting the violent criminals that Trump promised it would during the campaign. Most people don’t want a full-scale war on immigration.
So do we really need a new immigration enforcement army?
Subscribe if you think ICE has enough toys already
— Edited by William M. Arkin
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