Trump Goes All In On Deportation As A “Military Operation”

The White House administration’s hope is that his freshly minted immigration enforcement policies will lead to millions of deportations in record time.

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security guidelines will immediately increase the number of immigrants that are deemed a priority for capture and deportation from the country. Additionally, they direct law enforcement agencies to begin a mass hiring spree to help DHS and ICE track down and apprehend illegal immigrants.

However, this “military operation” will not actually include any branch of the military to assist federal agencies and local police.

There have been reports that the administration is still considering deploying National Guard troops to assist federal agencies via another executive order which could replace the now defunct changes to The Posse Comitatus Act and Insurrection Act, which were modified and included in the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill signed by President George W. Bush.

Those changes, which allowed the President to deploy individual state National Guard regiments anywhere in the country for a period of one year to assist in law enforcement, were repealed by the Obama administration in 2008.

Trump was quick to point out that he is not making a grab for additional power, but merely working to fulfill his campaign promise to deport criminal undocumented immigrants.

“We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country, and at a rate nobody has ever seen before, and they’re the bad ones, and it’s a military operation. You see what’s happening at the border, all of the sudden, for the first time, we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out. When you see gang violence and you’ve read about it like never before, all of the things, much of that is people who are here illegally. And they’re tough and they’re tough, but they’re not tough like our people.”

However, leaders for both the LAPD and NYPD have already said that they will ignore the new directives of the Commander in Chief.

New NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill released a memo to all members of the NYPD stating:

“The NYPD does not conduct civil immigration enforcement. Specifically, this department does not enforce administrative warrants issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or federal immigration judges solely in connection with civil immigration violations.”

The refusal by police forces to comply with Trump’s directive now sets the table for a public showdown between law enforcement agencies and Trump.