(José Niño, Headline USA) President Donald Trump’s administration has not followed through on its immigration enforcement commitments, according to Mike Howell, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
He shared his bleak assessment with the Washington Examiner during a phone interview.
The president’s failures stem from his unwillingness to execute workplace deportations and from Department of Homeland Security messaging that undermines public confidence, Howell argued.
“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 reportedly stated. “And if you don’t enforce workside enforcement at scale and regularly, you’re never going to get mass deportations.”
Trump promoted mass deportations throughout his campaign, something he has not accomplished, Howell maintained.
“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].”
The administration has consistently misrepresented arrest figures and deportation totals to hide this gap between rhetoric and reality, Howell charged.
“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.”
DHS launched a messaging campaign in October highlighting arrests of dangerous unauthorized immigrants labeled the “worst” of the worst, a group that 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.
DHS may actually be reporting fewer deportations than it has carried out, Howell suggested.
“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.
The federal government should make substantial investments in deportation infrastructure rather than spending resources on Republican messaging efforts, Howell contended.
“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.”
The absence of mass deportations could damage the Republican Party going forward, Howell warned.
“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 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.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
