The tyranny of quotas
- Bruce Botelho
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
By Bruce Botelho
Americans voting in the 1980 presidential election were challenged to make their choice by answering one question, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" In November the question may well be: “Do you feel safer than you did two years ago?”
By 2024 national crime rates had continued their historic downward trend, with significant decreases in both violent crime and property crime, reaching some of the lowest rates since the 1960s. Nevertheless, while illegal border crossings were also trending downward throughout 2024, the country had seen unprecedented surges in migration over the previous years, driven by economic and political upheaval in other countries.
Donald Trump exploited these surges by merging them with Americans’ justifiable concern about crime in the nation by falsely claiming that other governments were releasing millions from their prisons, jails and asylums to flood the United States. He won the election.
He designated Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, as his primary architect to deliver his promise to rid the country of the “worst of the worst” and to mount the “largest deportation operation in American history.” Miller initially turned to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to identify and detain undocumented immigrants in the non-border areas of the country, leaving the Border Patrol to catch migrants crossing into the United States along the border but outside of ports of entry.
Within days the Trump White House had set a quota of between 1,200 and 1,500 arrests a day. As early as February, the two highest-ranking members of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) were themselves removed from their headquarters positions, followed by the head of ICE and the acting replacement head of ERO because of the “slow” rate of arrests. The message up and down the ranks was unmistakable: failure to meet quotas was a career killer.
In May the White House increased the quota to 3,000 a day. The new quota required a marked change in tactics— and in personnel. ICE was regarded as the primary “interior” immigration enforcement agency. Though it occasionally conducted high-profile sweeps (e.g. meat-packing plants), its agents traditionally worked from “target lists” and used civil administrative warrants and detainers to take custody of people from jails and prisons. The Border Patrol’s remit relied heavily on mass roundups along the unguarded southern border of the country. Though it is a civilian agency, its uniforms, rank structure, training, armed tactics and mission structure resemble that of the military.
Now ICE and Border Patrol deploy together (Portland, Los Angeles, Memphis, Chicago, Minneapolis) to undertake indiscriminate sweeps of neighborhoods, work sites, shopping malls and the like. When protesters gather, Trump brands them “domestic terrorists” or “antifa” and dispatches reinforcements to quell the crowds, only to inflame the situation further. The editorial board of the Minnesota Star Tribute described a scene that could be Anywhere USA:
"Battalions of armed federal agents are moving through neighborhoods, transit hubs, malls and parking lots and staging near churches, mosques and schools. Strangers with guns have metastasized in spaces where daily life should be routine and safe. It feels like a military occupation."
"Heavily armed and masked government agents are prone to confront any American they encounter in the street, but especially people of certain colors, accents or styles of dress. The encounters are often violent."
Meanwhile in October, field office directors in five major cities — Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego — were pushed out for failure to satisfy quotas and were replaced by senior Border Patrol agents.
And in December, Miller established another quota, directing US Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices to refer at least 100 to 200 cases per month to the Office of Immigration Litigation to revoke U.S. citizenship from naturalized Americans.
It is hard to imagine the trauma unleashed on a child who sees a parent torn away by agents when appearing for a Green card interview or a parent who can’t shield her child from the smell of tear gas or the sound and sight of flash grenades. How does one explain why there are armed and masked men lingering near one’s school grounds?
The tragic consequences we’ve seen unfold in America’s neighborhoods were predictable: a volatile mix of pressure to achieve unreasonable daily goals undertaken by increasingly undertrained officers allowed to hide their identities behind masks to escape accountability, but incentivized to round up anyone who appears to be “foreign.”
Through his quotas Trump may have reached his goal of removing 1 million migrants in his first year in office, but the cost has been incalculable. It has disrupted communities, uprooted families and destroyed lives. It has also stripped us of our collective sense of American justice and decency. If this Fall Americans conclude that they feel less safe than they did under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden and vote accordingly, it will be due in large part to the machinations of Trump himself.
• Bruce Botelho is a former Juneau mayor and Alaska attorney general who is the president of the Juneau Independent’s board of directors.
