In his Washington Post column Marc A. Thiessen observes:
When Trump took office a year ago, Homan made clear that the administration’s intention was not to carry out “a mass sweep of neighborhoods” but rather to “prioritize public safety threats” by detaining and deporting “the worst of the worst” — those charged with or convicted of serious crimes.
Trump was elected with a mandate to do that. In a New York Times-Ipsos poll just before his inauguration, an 87 percent supermajority said they supported removing all migrants “who are here illegally and have criminal records.” Indeed, 63 percent said they wanted Trump to go further and deport all migrants “who are here illegally and arrived over the last four years” under President Joe Biden, while 55 percent wanted to deport “all immigrants who are here illegally” — period.
Over the past year, Homan has been true to his word: Nearly 70 percent ICE arrests nationwide have involved illegal migrants convicted or charged with crimes, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In states where local officials work with ICE, these arrests have taken place without chaos. For example, there have been more than 88,000 ICE arrests in Texas — the most in the country — largely without incident. But in Minnesota, there have been 10 times fewer arrests but far more violent confrontations.
Why? Because when state and local officials won’t help federal immigration officers target those with criminal records, they have no choice but to go into communities to get them. Since Trump took office, DHS reports that Minnesota has released nearly 470 illegal migrants charged with or convicted of crimes back onto the streets — including those charged with sex offenses against a child, lewd or lascivious acts with a minor, domestic violence, drug trafficking, vehicular homicide, burglary, first-degree aggravated robbery and larceny. In all, DHS says Minnesota officials are refusing to honor more than 1,360 ICE detainers.
That has required ICE to carry out large sweeps resulting in collateral arrests of illegal migrants without criminal records — the very people Frey and Walz are purporting to protect with their sanctuary policies — because, as Homan has made clear, while ICE is focused primarily on those with criminal records, they will arrest anyone they find who is here illegally.
His conclusion is that Democrats are miscalculating. I disagree. Mr. Thiessen assumes this is a policy failure in Democratic-run sanctuary cities. It’s not. It’s a media strategy. This is not miscalculation but a classic media-driven political strategy: maximize visible enforcement, let federal power generate disturbing images, and convert those images into electoral capital. It has been effective in recent memory—consider family separation footage during Trump 1.0. I think that Democrats may be calculating that the bad taste left in the mouths of Americans by ICE’s killing of multiple Americans in Minneapolis and even the poor optics of masked ICE officers using riot-suppression methods in Chicago and Minneapolis could be enough to sway voters to give the party control of the House in the November elections.
That’s supported by a more recent New York Times-Sienna poll that found that while a majority of Americans still approve of immigration enforcement in the abstract a majority disapproves of the way that ICE has been doing its job.
Democrats may be acting rationally within a broken political incentive structure, even while producing bad policy.
Republicans are acting to further damage a broken political incentive structure, even while producing bad policy.