It was an unusual display on the North Lawn of the White House: 88 yard signs with the faces of people the Trump administration says are criminals who had been arrested by immigration agents.
President Donald Trump has launched harsh immigration actions in his first 100 days in office—detaining more people for immigration violations, allowing arrests outside schools and courthouses, and sending more than 200 Venezuelan men to be imprisoned in El Salvador.
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He plans to do more in the coming weeks.
Trump is ramping up raids on workplaces to find those in the country unlawfully, and on Monday, signed an order directing his Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to send him a list of so-called sanctuary cities that aren’t doing enough to cooperate with his deportation efforts, according to Trump officials.
The number of immigration arrests at workplaces has tripled since Trump took office, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Monday. “It’s going to triple again,” Homan said. Trump vowed on the campaign trail to bring back workplace raids, after the Biden administration had largely put a stop to such enforcement tactics.
With the new order, Trump is threatening to cut federal funds to cities and states his Administration decides are blocking his mass deportation effort. In the executive order he signed Monday, Trump gave Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a May 28 deadline to publish a list of cities, counties and states that are obstructing "the enforcement of federal immigration laws” and told every agency to identify federal funds “for suspension or termination” that would otherwise be sent to those places identified as “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
If Trump follows through with cutting federal funding to local governments, it would be just the latest example of his Administration usurping powers given to Congress under the Constitution. Already in his first three months in office, Trump has cut federal jobs and funding to agencies that were appropriated by Congress.
Trump used incendiary language in his order, saying that state and local officials who obstruct immigration efforts are engaged in an “insurrection.” State and local officials, he wrote, “continue to use their authority to violate, obstruct, and defy the enforcement of Federal immigration laws. This is a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States.” Legal experts have warned that Trump’s comparing illegal immigration to an “invasion” and his painting those who oppose him as treasonous could be used as a false pretext for unlocking extraordinary presidential powers, including the Insurrection Act of 1807 and other laws designed for leading the nation in times of extreme national disasters and war.
Over the past week, the Trump administration has increased the tempo of its immigration crackdown. Law enforcement agencies in Florida worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Miami office to arrest 800 people last week who were allegedly in the country unlawfully. And the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security arrested 100 people and allegedly seized drugs and weapons in a joint raid Sunday on a night club in Colorado Springs, Colo., that the Trump administration says was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The new actions come as the Trump administration tries to push through barriers to its deportation actions. Trump’s Justice Department arrested a county judge in Wisconsin on Friday for allegedly helping an undocumented immigration avoid federal deportation officers, and the Trump administration is facing alarm and scrutiny for deporting three U.S. citizen children with their mothers. And Trump has flouted a Supreme Court order that he "facilitate" the release from prison in El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported from Maryland. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump said he had not asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia “because I haven’t been asked to ask him by my attorneys”
Polling shows that Trump’s immigration actions are losing public support. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll on Friday showed 46% of Americans approved of Trump’s immigration policies, down from a 50% approval rating on the topic in February. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Friday, showed 47% approved and 51% disapproved of his handling of immigration.