Migrants with limpet mines by @BloggersRUs

Migrants with limpet mines

by Tom Sullivan

The president plans a big crackdown on immigrants next week. He'll deport millions. It will be yooge. You will want to tune in. He's bringing back Sweeps Week.

"Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States," Donald Trump tweeted Monday night. "They will be removed as fast as they come in."

The president's pitching this is news to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and new director Mark Morgan, a former FBI and Border Patrol official. ICE does not like having its immigrant roundups telegraphed. "U.S. officials with knowledge of the preparations have said in recent days that the operation was not imminent," reports the Washington Post, "and ICE officials said late Monday night that they were not aware that the president planned to divulge their enforcement plans on Twitter."

Trump urged then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf last year for alerting citizens of an impending federal raid. Publicizing a future operation is "unheard of at ICE." But like fictional Russian Premier Dimitri Kissoff, Trump loves surprises.

Here's another, per the Post:

The family arrest plan has been considered even more sensitive than a typical operation because children are involved, and Homeland Security officials retain significant concerns that families will be inadvertently separated by the operation, especially because parents in some households have deportation orders but their children — some of whom are U.S. citizens — might not. Should adults be arrested without their children because they are at school, day care, summer camp or a friend’s house, it is possible parents could be deported while their children are left behind.

Supporters of the plan, including [Stephen] Miller, Morgan and ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence, have argued forcefully that a dramatic and highly publicized operation of this type will send a message to families that are in defiance of deportation orders and could act as a deterrent.

Aid workers spearheading efforts to remedy these systemic problems in the region have warned the decision will backfire, penalizing poor and working-class Central Americans for the failures of their elected leaders and fueling more migration to the U.S. Most of the aid allocated by the U.S., including by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is sent directly to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), not governments in the Northern Triangle.