White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was enraged to hear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had been focusing on arresting only criminals, The Washington Examiner reported Monday.
Last week, 25 field directors from ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operations, as well as 25 special agents from Homeland Security Investigations, were called to Washington for a meeting. Officials told the Examiner that the president’s ghoulish immigration czar wasn’t happy.
“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone,” said one official. “‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down.”
The official told the conservative outlet that Miller didn’t want ICE to narrow its field to just undocumented immigrants with criminal records. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recalled.
When one ICE official pushed back against Miller’s call to widen the deportation dragnet, citing border czar Tom Homan’s claims that ICE’s deportation efforts would target criminals, the deputy chief of staff seemed confused.
“What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” the official recounted Miller as saying. “Miller got into a little bit of a pissing contest.”
Last week, Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that the Trump administration had set a new quota of a minimum 3,000 ICE arrests per day. On Monday, ICE announced that it had completed its largest operation ever in Massachusetts and the Greater Boston Area—but as the number of arrests rose, so did the number of people detained with no criminal record or deportation order. Hundreds of so-called “collaterals” were arrested as part of the massive operation.
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