Trump Administration Begins Purge of ICE Leadership Over Amid Frustration With Deportation Numbers: Report
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
The Trump administration initiated a purge of top officials in Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid growing frustration over the rate of deportations, NBC News and Fox News reported on Monday night.
While NBC News reported that the administration “is planning to replace some regional leaders” at ICE with officials from Customs and Border Protection, Fox News’s Bill Melugin said the purge is “underway.”
“President Donald Trump’s top aides have welcomed Border Patrol’s more aggressive tactics to secure arrests, such as rappelling into apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters and jumping out of rental trucks in Home Depot parking lots, as they’ve become disappointed with ICE,” two Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News.
“The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” one of the DHS officials told NBC. “So CBP will do it.”
Both NBC and Fox reported that the initiative is being led by DHS special employee Corey Lewandowski, a longtime confidant of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Melugin reported on X that ICE field office directors in at least eight cities are being replaced, including those in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and New Orleans. He said there is “significant friction in Homeland Security as to how to best to achieve more deportations:
I’m told there is significant friction within different wings of DHS and the administration, with Border Czar Tom Homan & ICE Director Todd Lyons preferring to prioritize targeting criminal aliens & the ‘worst of the worst’ or those with deportation orders while DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Corey Lewandowski, and BP Commander Bovino prefer to use aggressive tactics to arrest anyone in the US illegally, including but not limited to criminals, to ramp up deportation numbers and achieve President Trump’s promises of mass deportations.
One Border Patrol agent Melugin spoke to said, “What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself, anyone in the US illegally is on the table.”
On Friday, The New York Times reported that the administration was planning major changes in leadership at ICE.
