President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced Friday it will replace the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) just a month after the president took office.
Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello will be reassigned to oversee field operations. The Associated Press writes:
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Friday that Caleb Vitello, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was “no longer in an administrative role, but is instead overseeing all field and enforcement operations: finding, arresting, and deporting illegal aliens, which is a major priority of the President and Secretary (Kristi) Noem.”
The statement made no mention of why Vitello, a career ICE official with more than two decades on the job, was reassigned or who his replacement will be. White House officials have expressed frustration with the pace of deportations of people in the country illegally.
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the decision to reassign Vitello came from the Homeland Security secretary and not from the president.
Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem has yet to confirm a replacement, but the Washington Post reported:
Louisiana Secretary of Wildlife and Fisheries Madison Sheahan, a former campaign aide to Noem, is expected to become acting deputy director of ICE, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a position that hadn’t been publicly announced.
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the decision to reassign Vitello came from the Homeland Security secretary and not from the president.
However, Sheahan may be barred from the top job because of a congressional statute that requires the ICE chief to have extensive law enforcement experience.
At the same time, Trump officials are building a holding center for 10,000 illegal migrants at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss base in El Paso, Texas, according to the New York Times.
The effort underlines Trump’s determination to repatriate many of the nine million southern migrants welcomed by President Joe Biden’s deputies, and it was revealed the day after an impatient Trump sidelined the top executive at ICE.
The New York Times reported the Fort Bliss plan, saying:
President Trump’s team is developing a deportation hub at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, that could eventually hold up to 10,000 undocumented immigrants as they go through the process of being deported, according to three officials familiar with the plan.
Fort Bliss would serve as a model as the administration aims to develop more detention facilities on military sites across the country — from Utah to the area near Niagara Falls — to hold potentially thousands more people and make up for a shortfall of space at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a plan that is still in its early stages and has not yet been finalized.
…But the administration is not yet arresting immigrants at a rate that would fill a nationwide network of military facilities. ICE officers made more than 15,000 arrests between Jan. 21 and Feb. 13, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That’s an average of just under 700 arrests a day, more than double the typical daily rate in recent years, including during the Biden administration, but far short of what White House officials want..
The bases will be needed to hold migrants as more are processed for deportation to their home countries or Trump’s network of drop-off countries, such as Panama, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Currently, the administration has a network of 40,000 bed spaces in federal facilities, private jails, and county jails.
The lack of space reflects a multi-year strategic campaign by pro-migration groups to minimize the number of detention beds. That campaign reduced the willingness of Democrats in Congress to fund the detention centers needed for ordinary enforcement actions.
The exit of the illegal migrants will improve the U.S. economy because it will nudge up Americans’ wages, reduce their housing costs, redirect government spending to poor Americans, pressure companies to invest in workplace productivity technology, and eventually, boost trade with poor countries.The bases will be needed to hold migrants as more are processed for deportation to their home countries or Trump’s network of drop-off countries, such as Panama, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.
