WASHINGTON — The White House said on Sunday there will be no easing of the administration's mass deportation programme, days after voters delivered a heavy defeat for President Donald Trump's party in the midterm elections. The message, delivered in a statement to the BBC on Sunday, was direct: enforcement would continue at full pace, whatever the election result. Separately, multiple U.S. officials told CBS News that officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have received no instructions to reduce immigration enforcement since the election.
Source: BBC News via World Right Now
"This administration will not slow down its efforts to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens who terrorize our communities. There has never been a President stronger on immigration enforcement than President Trump," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told CBS News. DHS struck the same note, telling CBS its enforcement agency was "not backing away or slowing down" and that, under the president and Homeland Security Secretary Mullin, it would keep enforcing the country's laws and removing people without legal status who have committed crimes from the streets. Those descriptions of who enforcement targets are the administration's own characterisation, stated by its officials.
Source: CBS News via Palm Beach News Daily
The new arrest target: about 2,700 a day
Behind the public statements, the operational target has risen. In recent weeks, ICE officials have been instructed to try to carry out around 19,000 arrests per week, or about 2,700 per day — an increase from a prior target of 2,000 arrests a day, agency sources told CBS News. That target was set before the midterms, the sources said, so Sunday's statements mean a higher-tempo operation now continues into the post-election period with no pause ordered. Asked whether the midterms would usher in a pullback in immigration enforcement, one official responded: "I would count on the opposite," pointing to Stephen Miller's move to the top White House staff job.
A follow-up to Friday's shake-up — Miller takes the top staff job on Monday
This is the policy consequence of the White House shake-up Awaaz Punjab reported on Friday, when President Trump announced that deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller will become chief of staff starting Monday, November 9, while Susie Wiles moves to the Trump Political Operation. U.S. officials cited Miller's elevation as a clear indication the administration is likely to continue ICE's deportation operations, as well as its quieter campaign to sharply restrict legal immigration. Read the earlier report: Trump names Miller chief of staff
Miller has been in Mr. Trump's inner circle for a decade, since the 2016 campaign, and is regarded as the chief architect of the president's hardline immigration policies in both administrations. In the first administration, officials banned immigration and travel from Muslim-majority countries and separated thousands of migrant children from their parents under a "zero tolerance" crackdown that was abandoned after massive public uproar. In less than two years of the second administration, with Miller as deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, the administration has effectively closed the U.S. asylum system, shut down refugee admissions — with a notable exemption for White South Africans — tightened access to legal immigration benefits such as green cards, and undertaken highly visible ICE and Border Patrol arrest operations across the country, CBS News reported.
The Sunday hardening also followed a moment of apparent openness from Vice-President JD Vance. In a long online post reflecting on the election results, Mr. Vance said he was open to changing the focus of enforcement — for example, by concentrating more on businesses that employ workers without legal permission. The White House's stance since then has appeared to harden rather than soften, the BBC reported.
What voters said — and what the White House blames instead
Exit polls indicated immigration was one of the top issues, alongside the economy, among Texas Latinos, who swung heavily toward Democrats in a state long considered safely conservative; nationwide, 58% of voters said the administration's deportation crackdown had "gone too far," CBS News reported. The BBC reported exit polling put immigration as the third most important issue for voters, behind the economy and the state of democracy. Administration sources, however, told both outlets the White House believes the losses were largely driven by concerns about the economy, affordability and the war with Iran — not its immigration crackdown.
January brings a hostile Congress — but ICE keeps its money
In January, Democratic lawmakers will take control of both chambers of Congress and assume sweeping powers to investigate the administration's immigration crackdown and its most controversial policies. Theresa Cardinal Brown, an immigration official at DHS during the Obama and Bush administrations, told CBS News she expects congressional Democrats to use those powers to try to rein in ICE — issuing a flurry of subpoenas, holding oversight hearings and passing measures to limit immigration enforcement funds — and predicts some communities and states with newly elected Democratic leaders, like Texas, may scrap or limit policies that required local police to work with ICE; last week Houston's mayor said he would direct local police to limit their cooperation with ICE following the election results. But Cardinal Brown stressed Mr. Trump will likely veto Democratic attempts to restrict enforcement, and noted the agency received $75 billion in funds through 2029 under the "One Big Beautiful Bill" the president signed into law last year. "They're going to continue apace," she said. "They have the money. They have the resources."
The backlash, and the Minneapolis shadow
The enforcement operations have repeatedly triggered community backlash. The BBC noted anti-enforcement demonstrations in Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles this year. In January, federal immigration officials killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during a crackdown in Minneapolis that the administration scaled back following bipartisan outcry, CBS News reported. Miller has also publicly floated suspending habeas corpus — the right to challenge unlawful detention — for ICE detainees, while habeas cases have skyrocketed over the past two years as other avenues for fighting deportation from detention have narrowed.
For the large Punjabi and South Asian communities across the United States — including mixed-status families, students, workers and the truckers who keep the interstate corridors moving — Sunday's statements settle the immediate question many were asking after the election: there will be no post-election breathing space. An operation instructed to aim higher, at about 2,700 arrests a day, with its funding secured through 2029 and its best-known hardliner moving into the chief of staff's office on Monday, is the operating reality families and their lawyers must now plan around — even as a Democratic Congress prepares investigations in January.
Stephen Miller starts as White House chief of staff on Monday, November 9. Watch whether ICE arrest numbers move toward the reported ~2,700-a-day target, whether more cities and states follow Houston in limiting local police cooperation, and, from January, whether the new Democratic Congress opens the subpoenas, oversight hearings and funding fights that former DHS official Theresa Cardinal Brown predicted. The White House has said nothing about changing course.
Awaaz Punjab will track the first week of enforcement under the new target and the new chief of staff, and will report any change in the instructions given to ICE and DHS field offices.