The mass deportation sweeps integral to meeting Stephen Miller’s goals have slowed substantially after last month’s federal retreat from Minnesota. It’s the biggest setback the White House deputy chief of staff has faced in his bid to purge the country of millions of immigrants. But as the highly visible raids featuring Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol have receded, it would be unwise to mistake a change in tactics with a change in Miller’s overall strategy and goals.
If there were one word to describe the Trump administration’s deportation campaign months before its surge into Minnesota, it would be “unsubtle.” The quota of arrests Miller had set — 3,000 per day by June, double his demand for 1,500 daily in January — required ICE to ditch its longstanding methods. Rather than targeting specific individuals, it adopted mass roundups of immigrants as its standard operating procedure.
If there were one word to describe the Trump administration’s deportation campaign months before its surge into Minnesota, it would be “unsubtle.”
The sight of these indiscriminate, and yet highly discriminatory, arrests helped tank President Donald Trump’s approval rating, especially toward his immigration policies. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino’s self-important, heavy-handed antics helped add fuel to the growing embers of public discontent toward the federal interventions. That discontent swelled into outrage when federal immigration agents killed two Minneapolis residents within the span of two weeks. Reportedly it was Miller behind the initial claim that one of those victims, Alex Pretti, was a “domestic terrorist,” a false charge that helped galvanize the opposition to ICE’s tactics.
Withdrawing from Minnesota last month was the first of several major setbacks for Miller’s policies. The Department of Homeland Security is still partially shutdown as Senate Democrats hold up funding in hopes of instituting new reforms on ICE and Border Patrol. Meanwhile, the department itself is soon to be without a leader after Kristi Noem’s firing last week, with no hearing scheduled to get her replacement confirmed.
According to The New York Times, ICE pulling back on massive city-wide operations and returning to more targeted arrests has had an impact Miller must hate:
In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested roughly 11 percent fewer people per day than they had the previous month, according to internal government figures reviewed by The New York Times. The drop was driven in part by ICE arresting fewer immigrants without criminal records, the data show. Overall, arrests have fallen to their lowest levels since September.
While any drop off is encouraging, the danger in this moment is that the “softer touch” Trump said his administration needed will be mistaken as a reversion to the norm. According to the Times’ review of ICE data, in February, agents were still detaining about 1,115 people daily, which remains “about four times as high as they were during the last year of the Biden administration.” And 40% of the people ICE arrested in February had no criminal record, once again exposing the lie in Trump’s claims that only the “worst of the worst” were being targeted.
The public’s opinion soured toward the brutish show of force Miller’s demands required, but there’s no guarantee that the public will maintain that disapproval as the memory of heavily armed agents patrolling city streets fades. And while Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., suggested Sunday that Miller needs to be fired, he made clear he has issue with the administration’s methods, not its goal.
“We’ve lost the debate over immigration and deportations,” Tillis told CNN. “I believe that we should deport everyone that we can find that came across the borders during the Biden administration. But we’ve got to be smart, use our limited resources, go after the most dangerous first.” The upside for Miller is that while he may have lost several recent battles, the war is still ongoing. That’s almost exactly how Trump sold Americans on his mass deportation scheme, only for Miller to carry out the real agenda of hitting a million deportations a year, no matter who got caught up in the dragnet. The upside for Miller is that while he may have lost several recent battles, the war is still ongoing. After all, he still has three more years and billions of dollars already appropriated to ICE and DHS more broadly to help bring to life his vision of an America purged of its immigrants. Even though ICE and Border Patrol are at least temporarily restrained, DHS is still procuring warehouses and factories to convert into the detention facilities that Miller seeks to fill. Meanwhile, hundreds of immigrants are still being rounded up daily despite committing no crime. The comparative quiet on city streets isn’t being matched in the cries of anguish of families who know a loved one won’t be coming home. Even if the deportation figures aren’t rising as fast as Miller would like, the sum of lives forever changed by his cruelty won’t be receding anytime soon.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
