Top Trump aide Stephen Miller is using a "completely made-up figure" to convince Americans and undocumented immigrants alike that self-deportation is the way to go, according to an official with the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
"Miller recently claimed that 1 million people have self-deported already," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick told Slate, adding, "That’s a completely made-up figure. But the goal is to send the message that everybody’s doing it, they’re all leaving: 'If you leave now, then you won’t have to worry about this happening to you. You won’t have to worry about being thrown on the ground by Border Patrol, shoved into a detention center, and treated poorly, if you just go home now.'"
To accomplish his main goal of getting migrants to self-deport, Miller has struck fear in the hearts of those seeking work and a better life in America, not just the criminal element, Reichlin-Melnick said.
It all started coming together for Miller in May after he met with ICE field office directors and imposed a monumental 3,000-immigrant-per-day arrest quota. An angry Miller suggested that ICE agents stake out 7-Elevens, Home Depots, and other places migrants might gather to find work.
"Within days of that meeting, things started looking very different" and much more "aggressive," Reichlin-Melnick said. "From now on, it was about quantity over quality."
The frightening videos of "families ripped apart, longtime residents of the city who’ve been here for 20, 30 years, who have U.S. citizen children," played perfectly into Miller's self-deportation strategy.
Reichlin-Melnick said that in June, ICE arrested "less than half of one percent of the undocumented population" in LA, but those low numbers may be behind the "self-deportation push" that "the administration is leaning into."
"The more attention paid and the more people see these videos of outrage, the more DHS is gladdened because it means that people are getting the message that no one is safe," Reichlin-Melnick said. And it's that message that makes self-deportation far more attractive to a vulnerable population, while lightening the load on ICE agents trying to meet out-of-reach quotas.