The Trump administration has set an aggressive new goal to combat difficulties in meeting mass deportation targets. According to a report in Axios, in a May 21 meeting, Trump advisor Stepen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that federal immigration agents step up their efforts and arrest 3,000 people per day.
One of Trump’s central campaign promises in 2024 was to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in US history, vowing to expel between 15 to 20 million people. However, five months into Trump’s second presidency, his administration has struggled to hit the necessary benchmarks, with deportation numbers largely the same as during Biden’s last year in office. According to a report published in March by TRAC Immigration, Trump’s so-called “daily removals” “have failed to reach even the levels achieved by the previous administration,” “despite deploying staff from other agencies to assist in enforcement activities and ordering active-duty military to facilitate removals at the border.” According to this report, “President Trump’s removal record is growing worse with time rather than improving.”
The Trump administration has fought tooth and nail against this trend, rearranging top immigration officials and defying existing laws to open new immigration detention centers to hold immigrants detained by ICE awaiting deportation proceedings. And with border-area deportations decreasing as fewer migrants attempt to cross the border, the Trump administration has ramped up arrests in non-border areas instead – terrorizing local communities.
ICE detains 18-year-old high school student as part of “Operation Patriot”
US Immigration Customs and Enforcement regularly publishes images of its arrest operations on its website and across social media, with one such photo from an arrest of over 100 immigrants in Tallahassee, Tennessee showing construction workers lined up at a job site as ICE agents arrest them one by one.
Some ICE operations seem to be designed to evoke fear and terror, such as the arrest of Massachusetts high school honors student Marcelo Gomes Da Silva. Da Silva was arrested as he was driving his teammates to volleyball practice early in the morning. His arrest comes in the context of ICE conducting nearly 1,500 immigration arrests in a months-long operation in the state of Massachusetts, which ICE has dubbed “Operation Patriot”.
The 18-year-old Milford High School student was detained by ICE agents early on Saturday morning after four ICE vehicles surrounded his car, according to Gomes’ girlfriend. On Sunday, after the Milford High School graduation ceremony, Gomes’ fellow students and community members marched from the ceremony to Milford Town Hall, many wearing their graduation caps and gowns while calling for the release of Gomes, who was set to graduate alongside them.
On Monday, hundreds of Milford High School students walked out of classes in protest of Gomes’ continued detention by ICE. Students held a banner reading “Free Marcelo”, as well as signs with slogans such as “You can’t cage humanity” and “You can’t be illegal on stolen land.”
Many students at the rally knew Marcelo personally. On Monday, a student addressed the crowd who had just walked out of Milford, describing Marcelo as full of love and joy, but treated like a criminal by “this system.”
“It’s time to stand up to this corrupt, systemic racism,” the student entreated. “It’s time to stand up against the people that allowed this to happen. Milford, it’s time to resist… at the moment, we’re the focus of the entire nation. News cameras are on us, the whole world is watching…let’s continue to push against discrimination and hate in our town, and in our nation.”
