After Citizenship Setback, Trump Could Use New Tools To Expedite Deportations

After an embarrassing defeat at the Supreme Court in his bid to limit the ambit of the birthright citizenship law, US President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to turbocharge his deportation efforts. The Trump administration is planning to first target the immigrants who are now eligible for deportation, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. 

People familiar with the matter said that discussions about the deportation push are still in an early stage. They said that rather than sending a flood of immigration agents to cities, this time they plan to rely on data and targeting tools. 

The report comes about a week after an appeals court ruled that Team Trump could move forward with a process known as "expedited removal". The process allows the government to fast-track deportations without court hearings for immigrants who can't prove they have lived in the US for longer than two years, expanding the universe of people the Trump administration can now target.

According to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute, around 622,000 people could be targeted using that tool, as the White House comes under pressure to increase deportation numbers to fulfil Trump's central campaign promise. The move can affect thousands of undocumented Indians living in the US.

'Need Quantity'

"To achieve mass deportations, you need to focus on quantity," Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told WSJ. 

Oversight Project is an outside conservative group that is monitoring deportations and trying to keep them on track. 

"It's time to move away from the 'worst of the worst' focus and broaden the aperture. They need to get the numbers up," Howell added. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refused to comment on the matter just yet. A representative for the department told WSJ, "For the safety of our law enforcement, we do not discuss future or potential operations."

Trump's Immigration Push

Amid the president's plummeting ratings, the Trump administration has been walking on tiptoes over the immigration agenda, hoping to avoid a repeat performance of its deadly operation in Minneapolis, where at least two civilian protestors -- Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both US citizens -- were killed during the operation.

The administration has been walking a tightrope for several months, hoping to avoid a repeat performance of its deadly operation in Minneapolis, while also trying to assure supporters on the right that it hasn't abandoned one of its top policy priorities. About 52 per cent of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration, according to a polling aggregate from Cook Political Report.

But, for his part, Trump has suggested that he is willing to lean back into hard-line immigration messaging, even as he sought to lower the profile of his mass-deportation effort earlier this year.

Taking to his Truth Social platform recently, he boasted about his arrest and deportation numbers, claiming he was "not necessarily thrilled to be talking about it because it does not exactly sound NICE." 

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, told WSJ that Trump remains "committed to fulfilling the immigration-enforcement agenda he was elected to enact" and that his deportation efforts will increase with new funding from Congress and the recent court victories.