The cruelest of Trump’s policies is his determination to deport millions of immigrants. Stephen Miller, the man without a heart, wants to deport one million immigrants every year. The new head of the Department of Himrland Security, Markwayne Mullen, wants to meet that goal. So now the numbers of people detained has risen sharply, but most of them have never committed a violent crime.

Remember when Trump said he would deport “the worst of the worst”? Remember when he said he would expel the rapists and murderers?

I remember. You probably remember too.

Some are married to American citizens. Some are waiting for their green card to arrive.

That’s who he is deporting. Most of those detained have never committed a violent crime. Most are hardworking people who are contributing to society. Most are running small businesses or working on farms or in construction or landscaping. They need to get their papers, and they want them, but there is no path to legal citizenship.

Some of the deportees have lived here for twenty years or more.

No matter. The door to American citizenship is closed, except for white South Africans. For those whose skin is not white, go away.

Albert Sun and Alison McCann of The New York Times reported:

A surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. They included people married to U.S. citizens, people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim, and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke.

The red line on the bottom are those with violent convictions. The soaring green line on top are people with no convictions.

A majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws but who had not been charged with or convicted of a crime, an analysis of newly released federal data shows. The share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent.

Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July. Two fatal shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in Texas and Maine, drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that the administration was keeping its promises to arrest and deport criminals and that anyone in the country illegally was a target for enforcement.

The new data contains details on every ICE arrest through Aug. 5 and offers the fullest picture yet of how the agency’s activities have shifted since public backlash forced a retreat from the aggressive tactics seen in Minneapolis early this year. It was obtained by the Deportation Data Project, an academic group, through a public records lawsuit and analyzed by The New York Times.

After his confirmation this spring, the secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, promised quieter but more effective enforcement. ICE now appears closer than ever to meeting a recent goal of 2,000 daily arrests.

“They have more officers, more money, more detention space, more local partners and better systems,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official. “And they’re finally putting all the pieces together to build out this deportation machine.”

A wider focus 

Immigration arrests are near all-time highs in almost every state. Even sparsely populated Montana and Vermont saw spikes, with arrest rates more than doubling.

But the surge was strongest in Florida and Texas, two states with large unauthorized immigrant populations and leaders friendly to the Trump administration’s crackdown.

The golden door is closed.