White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said he remains confident that President Donald Trump will deport a million illegal immigrants by the end of the year.
“The rate of deportation is increasing every single day,” Miller said Monday outside the West Wing of the White House. “Remember, we inherited a system that was completely shut down … and once we clear away some of these rogue district court injunctions, we will be able to operate with an even greater degree of force and speed.”
One day before Trump commemorates the 100-day mark of his second administration, the White House underscored the president’s immigration policy achievements. Border czar Tom Homan reported that 139,000 illegal immigrants have been deported since Trump’s Inauguration Day.
“The ICE arrest removals are far beyond Biden. When I read the media, ‘Oh, the deportations are behind the Biden administration.’ Well why? Because they counted border removals. We don’t have 10.5 million people crossing the border. We don’t have border removals. So Joe Biden could’ve deported 5% of his encounters, and the numbers would still be higher than us on border removals because we have a secure border,” Homan said during an earlier press briefing.
Miller also addressed Gov. JB Pritzker‘s (D-IL) comments during Sunday’s New Hampshire Democratic Party’s McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner, a must-stop appearance in the Democratic presidential primary, that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”
“Well, what I would say is that his comments, if nothing else, clearly could be construed as inciting violence,” Miller said. “Just this war that Democrat governors and mayors are waging against federal law enforcement. This is nullificationist behavior, this is successionist behavior, where they’re saying they don’t recognize the supremacy of federal law enforcement to protect the lives and livelihoods of American citizens against a foreign invasion. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
LEAVITT, HOMAN SHARE STATUS OF TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION AGENDA
During the event, Pritzker criticized “do-nothing Democrats,” encouraging members of his party to engage in “mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption.”
“They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have,” he said. “We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.”