EXCLUSIVE — President Donald Trump’s administration has fallen short on its promises to enforce immigration law, according to Mike Howell, a visiting fellow of the Border Security and Immigration Center of the Heritage Foundation, per a phone interview with the Washington Examiner.
Howell attributed the president’s shortcomings to his refusal to carry out workplace deportations and the Department of Homeland Security’s misleading messaging, which is eroding public trust.
“There are a lot of people in and around the administration who are allergic to the concept of workside enforcement because big companies, agriculture, hotels, and restaurants don’t want to have their illegal workforce raided,” Howell stated. “And if you don’t enforce workside enforcement at scale and regularly, you’re never going to get mass deportations.”
Throughout his campaign trail, Trump championed mass deportations, something he has yet to do, Howell claimed.
“Since the election, there’s been a substantial amount of bargaining as to what the president’s promise is. The promise was the largest deportation operation in history,” Howell said. “Over time, people on the Left, mainstream media, the left-wing of the Republican Congress, and [for-profit industries] have sought to redefine the president’s promise to be the selective deportation of illegal [immigrants].”
To mask the shortfall, Howell alleged that the president’s administration has engaged in a consistent wave of false representations of the numbers and the arrests they have executed.
“It’s politics, right? You want to say you’re getting it done. You don’t want to be letting the president down,” Howell said. “I see a dual communication strategy; you have the awesome posting from the DHS at times, but then that’s attached to the ‘worst of the worst’ policy.”
In October, DHS engaged in a communication campaign of condemning the dangerous illegal immigrants apprehended by federal law enforcement as the “worst of the worst,” which included pedophiles and murderers.
“The deportation data is there. It has the most fidelity. We know who we put on a plane or a bus, and we know who goes through the whole deportation life cycle. These things are endlessly paper and provable. There is no good reason for it not to be out. And in its place, we’re being spun statistics of service-based extrapolations, of economic data, among other things,” Howell said.
“Data that’s there that usually goes out, that now does not go out, it breeds distrust,” Howell added.
Howell added to his remarks, stating that DHS might be underreporting its deportation numbers.
“The projections used by the time the administration took office was about half a million illegals in the U.S. half. If you trust their numbers, we should be out of criminal illegal aliens soon,” he said.
Howell argued for the need for major investments from the federal government to advance deportation efforts, rather than investing in the Republican messaging campaign.
“There should be massive investments in huge facilities and investments in the entry enforcement life cycle process to make a well-oiled machine that could get people through quickly,” Howell stated, “not low-bed facilities with catchy names.”
“They [the administration] should do what they promised. Deport millions of illegal aliens. They should get the big beautiful money out there. In a strategic way. Not just unveiling expensive state beds for facilities with low amounts of beds and cool names,” Howell added.
Indiana and Nebraska both announced their intentions to develop temporary holding cells for illegal immigrants called the Speedway Slammer and the Cornhusker Clink in August, following Florida’s creation of Alligator Alcatraz in June.
Howell then cited the effect the lack of mass deportations can have on the future of the Republican Party.
“I think a massive issue for the GOP right now is the satisfaction of the base. There are a lot of people who clearly voted for his campaign mandates. People want to see that 10 years into this whole project of MAGA, that if you push the vote button and it works, what you push the button for happens,” Howell stated.
THE CASE FOR MASS DEPORTATIONS
“It’s more likely that left-wing Republicans say you secured the border, you got rid of the criminal illegals, now let’s do a comprehensive immigration deal and give amnesty. I think that’s the idea with legs coming from these Republicans that sought to redefine mass deportations,” the veteran research fellow added.
“The American people need commas in the deportation numbers — a steady stream of commas to get to mass deportation levels. We need to increase many times over what is happening now,” Howell concluded.
