WASHINGTON
— President Trump’s efforts to secure the nation’s borders and get
tough on illegal immigrants, announced just days after he took office,
now face serious logistical problems along with the legal challenges
that threaten his ability to make good on a central campaign promise.
The
crackdown requires a vast commitment of resources, including hiring
15,000 new border patrol and immigration enforcement agents, which
officials say will take at least two years to accomplish.
Large
detention centers for thousands of Central American asylum seekers who
cross the southern border will need to be built because of an executive
order by Mr. Trump calling for an end to “catch and release” — the Obama
administration policy that the immigrants be released temporarily into
the United States while their cases are processed.
In the meantime, the White House has not produced a replacement for another executive order by Mr. Trump, a ban on travel
from seven predominantly Muslim countries that was blocked by a federal
court. The president said on Thursday that in order to withstand the
legal challenges, his lawyers are now preparing a more narrow executive
order that is likely to exempt green card holders, students, tech
workers and those with longstanding connections to the United States.
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In a rambling news conference
on Thursday, the president said his administration had undertaken “the
most substantial border security measures in a generation,” and he said
that efforts to find and deport “criminal aliens” would make the United
States safer.
“Some
people are so surprised that we’re having strong borders,” Mr. Trump
said. “Well, that’s what I’ve been talking about for a year and a half,
strong borders. They’re so surprised: ‘Oh, he is having strong borders.’
Well, that’s what I’ve been talking about to the press and to everybody
else.”
But
his early efforts to translate all of that talk into action are already
running into the reality of governing in Washington, where legal
constraints on taking action — and debates about paying for it — are
legendary.
Mr.
Trump has promised to hire 15,000 new Border Patrol and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents as part of a larger deportation force that
can remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the United States,
something he repeatedly promised to do during the campaign.
But
hiring such a large number of agents in a short period of time would be
nearly impossible, according to John F. Kelly, the former general whom
Mr. Trump chose to be the secretary of the Department of Homeland
Security.
“I
don’t believe we’re going to get 10,000 and 5,000 on board within the
next couple of years,” Mr. Kelly told lawmakers on Capitol Hill this
month, explaining that stringent hiring standards and training regimens
slow down the process.
“I’d
rather have fewer and make sure that they’re high-quality people that
are already serving in those organizations, already well trained, but I
will not skimp on the training and the standards,” Mr. Kelly said.
One
of the problems that Mr. Kelly faces is a polygraph test that
prospective agents, including those seeking to work for the Border
Patrol, must take. According to a former senior homeland security
official, nearly 60 percent of applicants fail it.
The
test was first put in place after another surge in hiring during the
George W. Bush administration. Thousands of people were hired without
being properly vetted, which resulted in dozens of corruption cases
involving Border Patrol and other agents, who were accused of taking
bribes and providing information to Mexican drug cartels.
The
former senior homeland security official, James Tomsheck, who was the
assistant commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, office of
internal affairs, said in several cases many of the new hires were
members of the cartels.
“The
corruption and excessive use of force that plague the agency is a
direct result of a hiring mandate to hire too many people too rapidly
without the proper vetting,” said Mr. Tomsheck, who was removed from his
position after, he said, he was accused of being too aggressive in
pursuing excessive use-of-force cases.
It is unclear how Mr. Trump and Mr. Kelly plan to solve the manpower problem.
One
option, swiftly denied on Friday by the White House, was a plan to use
as many as 100,000 National Guard troops as part of a nationwide
deportation force that would help to augment federal agents and local
authorities newly deputized to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
The
idea emerged in a draft memorandum, first reported by The Associated
Press, which asserted that National Guard troops, under the direction of
governors in border states, are “particularly well suited to assist in
the enforcement of federal immigration law and augment border security
operations by Department components.”
Gillian
M. Christensen, the acting press secretary for the Department of
Homeland Security, said the memorandum was a “very early, pre-decisional
draft that never made it to the secretary and was never seriously
considered by the department.” Sean Spicer, the White House press
secretary, said on Friday morning that the report by The Associated
Press was “100 percent not true.”
But advocates for immigrants reacted with alarm.
“The
administration wants to put on a show,” said Kevin Appleby, the senior
director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration
Studies of New York. “Their intent is to create fear, to create an
environment in which people either self-deport or hide in the shadows.”
The
proposal to deploy 100,000 troops would be a stark increase in the size
and scope of National Guard involvement in border security, but it is
not unprecedented.
Several
presidents, including George Bush and Barack Obama, called up thousands
of National Guard troops to bolster border patrol operations. While
they mostly acted as extra eyes to spot illegal border crossings, at
times they carried weapons and assisted in drug arrests.
In
1916, in response to cross-border raids by Mexican bandits and what The
New York Times described as a “prairie fire of anti-American sentiment
that has been sweeping northern Mexico,” President Woodrow Wilson
deployed more than 100,000 guardsmen to the border to reinforce regular
Army units.
More
recently, in July 2014, Rick Perry, then the governor of Texas, ordered
1,000 National Guard troops to its border with Mexico in an effort to
bolster his border-security credentials as he prepared to start his
presidential campaign.
The
deployment has been costly, controversial and continues to this day.
The troops live in hotels along the border during their deployments, and
the estimate of the costs in 2014 were $12 million a month.
Mr.
Perry’s efforts coincided with an influx of undocumented Central
American immigrants coming across the border, including unaccompanied
children and teenagers. Experts expect another surge in arrivals this
spring.
In
Mr. Trump’s executive order calling for an end to “catch and release,”
he also directed Mr. Kelly to do everything possible to “construct,
operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land
border with Mexico.” Immigration experts said that will be costly and
take time.
“The
bottom line is,” Mr. Appleby said, “they’re doing everything they can
legally do until they’re told not to by the courts to expand their
capacity to deport as many people as possible.”
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