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This is the result of policy that is designed to both accomplish something, and be maximally inflammatory to own the libs.
The way ICE has been set up, and communicated, which I will refer to as "the policy" as a shorthand, is a bad (or suboptimal) policy for enforcing immigration.
If you want to accomplish a policy goal, and your chosen avenue to do this causes roughly 50% of your population to hate it, and a smaller subset of that 50% to actively interfere, and for local politicians of areas dominated by that 50% to get popular support by opposing the policy, it's a stupid fucking policy. I'm not against ICE or its goals, but having local mayors and PDs refuse to help means you now cannot enforce immigration as effectively.
You can enforce immigration, you can own the libs, you cannot do both at once as effectively as focusing on one.
A well designed policy (or software system, or basically anything designed) has to take into account the way the average person will interact with it. It doesn't matter if your solution is theoretically the best solution in the world if it starts going sideways when it starts interacting with the world.
Another way of looking at this, if Spock and the Vulcans were designing ICE to maximize the number of immigrants removed from America, they wouldn't have made ICE so emotionally charged (it still would have become emotionally charged, but they'd do everything they could to mitigate that, instead of inflame it).
This is the chickens of bad policy coming home to roost. If you don't want this to happen in blue cities, design better.
If you want an example of genuis policy in a similar vein, bussing migrants to NYC a few years ago was a masterstroke. Lowered support for immigration AND owned the libs, it was deeply impressive.
There are huge bottlenecks for the Federal Government w/r/t deportation. It takes years to get the final order of removal for everyone. If they want to achieve their goal of reducing illegal immigration, they need to try to create strong disincentives for illegal immigration outside the normal process.
So they set up ways to soften the blow of self-deporting. Just use an app, we'll set up a flight anywhere you want to go and give you cash.
And if you don't self-deport, here is the consequence. Swift arrest without being able to settle your affairs.
An estimated 1.9 million people self-deported this year, with or without the app. Far more people are leaving on their own than are being removed by ICE.
More importantly, this signals to others not to make the attempt. Even when the US goes back under control of the Dems, there will always be this hesitancy for an entire generation of people. "Do I really want to go to the US, set up a life, just to risk the Americans electing another Trump and losing everything I built?" Now it seems possible in a way it didn't before.
ICE will never deport a tenth as many people as it can disincentivize from staying.
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Doesn't the whole sanctuary city thing indicate that even if you're trying to enforce the most milquetoast sort of stuff in this arena a decent amount of the country will just say 'No fuck you' and jam up the gears deliberately? Especially considering the Sanctuary City movement started in the 1980s and is almost 50 years old so you can't even say it's responsive to Republicans or Trump.
I do also think the clumsy visibility of ICE is intentional for two reasons. Firstly, it means that the Republican base feels that 'something is being done' to a degree that it hasn't in recent history since a plethora of headlines are generated. Secondly, it does a lot to change the tone of immigration and IMO has probably been part of why fresh incursions are very low.
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Well if you were a senior official in the Trump Administration, how would you suggest changing the Policy so as to be substantially more effective?
By doing exactly what?
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