Looks like Donald Trump figured out how to spend all that money he’s cut from things like food stamps, education, and medical research. According to a DHS report obtained by the Washington Post, Trump plans on ramping up his deportation force as part of the administration’s ongoing effort to sweep up as many of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants as possible:
The Trump administration is quickly identifying ways to assemble the nationwide deportation force that President Trump promised on the campaign trail as he railed against the dangers posed by illegal immigration.
An internal Department of Homeland Security assessment obtained by The Washington Post shows the agency has already found 33,000 more detention beds to house undocumented immigrants, opened discussions with dozens of local police forces that could be empowered with enforcement authority and identified where construction of Trump’s border wall could begin.
According to the assessment, Trump also wants to “speed up the hiring of hundreds of new Customs and Border Patrol officers” by “ending polygraph and physical fitness tests in some cases, according to the documents.” But an independent review in 2014 found that immigration officers have acted recklessly in their jobs, confirming that agents “have deliberately stepped in the path of cars apparently to justify shooting at the drivers.”
Sure, let’s give immigration agents less training. What could go wrong?
Aside from immigrant rights advocates, Trump’s plan could face push-back from the same folks who handed him a massive legislative defeat in Trumpcare last month: Congress.
These plans could be held up by the prohibitive costs outlined in the internal report and resistance in Congress where many lawmakers are already balking at approving billions in spending on the wall and additional border security measures.
Administration officials said the plans are preliminary and have not been reviewed by senior DHS management, but the assessment offers a glimpse of the behind the scenes planning at DHS to carry out the two executive orders Trump signed in January to boost deportations and strengthen border enforcement.
Gillian Christensen, DHS’s acting spokesperson, said the agency would not comment on what she called “pre-decisional documents.”
Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, says:
“This is an administration that very much is interested in setting up that mass deportation infrastructure and creating the levers of a police state. In these documents, you have more proof and evidence that they’re planning to carry it out.”