An irate Stephen Miller threatened senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials with termination unless their offices upped their game and started detaining at least 3,000 migrants a day.
The White House deputy chief of staff also warned that leaders of field offices ranking in the bottom 10 percent for migrant arrests were at risk of being fired, NBC News reports, citing unnamed sources.
The outbursts from Miller, viewed as the architect behind many of President Donald Trump’s most hardline immigration policies, came during a mid-May meeting with ICE officials. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also present, though was reportedly in a calmer mood.
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Soon after Miller issued his threat, ICE began ramping up its efforts to detain undocumented migrants across the U.S. The plan, dubbed “Operation At Large,” involved thousands of federal law enforcement officers and special forces, many of whom don’t typically assist with immigration, being pulled in to help ICE round up migrants accused of being in the country illegally.
The operation has also called for the deployment of about 21,000 National Guard troops, as well as 250 IRS agents who could use tax data to track down immigrants.
Trump’s push to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history is reportedly sparking friction among federal agencies. FBI agents, who normally steer clear of immigration enforcement and administrative removal orders, are increasingly being tasked with helping ICE arrest undocumented migrants.
Teams within the Justice Department working on unrelated matters have also been disbanded and reassigned to focus on immigration-related cases.
Federal agencies’ intense preoccupation with detaining migrants that is now influencing whether a case is prosecuted at all. In one instance, a U.S. attorney’s office dropped a potential federal prosecution involving a dangerous suspect simply because there wasn’t a clear immigration angle. The office passed the case to state prosecutors instead.
“Immigration status is now question No. 1 in terms of charging decisions,” an assistant U.S. attorney told NBC News.
“Is this person a documented immigrant? Is this person an undocumented immigrant? Is this person a citizen? Are they somehow deportable? What is their immigration status? And the answer to that question is now largely driving our charging decisions.”
In response to reports of Miller’s outburst, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: “Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump’s and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe.”
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from the Daily Beast.
