Contradictory Claims About Deportation Plan
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ 4:00 AM ET
... Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security issued new rules on which undocumented immigrants should be considered a priority for deportation. The memos include instructions to prioritize undocumented immigrants who are charged, but not necessarily convicted of a crime, as well as those who are said to have “committed” an act that could be charged as a crime. That criteria massively expands the number of undocumented immigrants considered a priority for deportation, including those who may have committed no crime at all. The memo also includes requests for the hiring of 10,000 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and 5,000 more Customs and Border Protection agents.
Today, there are roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Of those, up to 8 million are now at risk of deportation under Trump’s new enforcement measures, according to estimates by the Los Angeles Times. But funding to put some of the administration’s plans in place is complicated and could delay its execution ...
Congress needs to approve the administration’s funding requests, though it’s still unclear in what form that will come in. There are a few avenues the administration could take. In January, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress would pay for the construction of a wall along the U.S.- Mexico border and could do so through a supplemental appropriations bill. The administration could, theoretically, tack on a request for an increase in border patrol agents and ICE agents since they fall under the umbrella of immigration enforcement. But the administration could also decide to instead ask for an increase in funding for the Department of Homeland Security through the appropriations process, though receiving the funding is still not guaranteed. Appropriations bills need 60 votes in the Senate, so Republicans would have to garner some Democratic support.
Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, doesn’t recall big asks, like a sharp increase in border patrol agents, of “this magnitude” in the past. “At 9/11, I believe the border patrol was about at 10,000 or 11,000 and that was a big ramp up after 9/11. It basically took until 2010 or 2011 to double the size of the border patrol,” she said. Border patrol hiring, Meisnner noted, is complex: “the training is long, the security clearance process takes a long time. We used to use the number 27 initial recruits for one officer” ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/trump-illegal-immigration-deportation/517758/