Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is responding to progressive pressure to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, planning “significant changes” to how the agency gauges success as apprehensions plummet to historic lows and frustration simmers among agents.
Speaking to the Washington Post in an interview published Tuesday, Mayorkas explained how he was focused on “elevating all of the other work” ICE does, as opposed to measuring agency success by the number of deportations and arrests.
“I really am focused on [ICE] becoming a premier national security and law enforcement agency. I really want to elevate all of the other work it does and also ensure that its civil immigration work is well-focused in the service of the national security and public safety mission,” the secretary told the paper.
Mayorkas was due to complete a final version of the agency’s new priorities by the end of May, but he told the paper his review was not yet completed.
“What those changes will be, I am wrestling with right now, quite frankly.”
Officials in the agency expressed frustration to the paper with how the administration was approaching this sensitive work.
Mayorkas has held town hall events with ICE officers and staffers in recent weeks to garner feedback on those changes.
He did not say what kind of feedback he has received, but ICE officials told the paper that President Biden and Mayorkas had placed such stringent restrictions on deportation officials that their work was effectively abolished.
“It’s a weird, frustrating time. It feels like the administration doesn’t have our backs,” one ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the paper.
Employees argued that officers were too worried about the potential to be reprimanded over an arrest to actually make one. Instead, they spend their time idling or working out.
While border crossings reach a 20-year high, ICE is currently averaging one arrest every two months.
It employs 6,000 officers.
The agency also carried out fewer than 3,000 deportations in April, the lowest level on record.
Reps for DHS did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment, nor did the White House.
The Biden administration’s undoing of former President Donald Trump’s border policies has prompted a flood of Central American and Mexican illegal migrants at the US border, including thousands of unescorted children.
Central Americans looking for refuge from the Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — have taken these policy moves, as well as the overwhelmingly more welcoming tone from Democrats, as a sign that Biden is inviting them to cross the border.
Insisting that the border was not facing a crisis, Mayorkas said in early March that the problems the agency faced should be blamed on the previous administration.
The data, however, overwhelmingly shows that migrants were flooding the border because they believed Biden would welcome them with open arms.
As Mayorkas denied the existence of a crisis, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blamed the new president for it, arguing that the “expectations” he set left migrants with the perception that they would be let into the US.
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