Trump Set to Ratchet Up His Immigration Crackdown During Next 100 Days

It was an unusual display on the North Lawn of the White House: 88 yard signs with the faces of people the Trump administration says are criminals who had been arrested by immigration agents.

President Donald Trump has launched harsh immigration actions in his first 100 days in office—detaining more people for immigration violations, allowing arrests outside schools and courthouses, and sending more than 200 Venezuelan men to be imprisoned in El Salvador. 

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He plans to do more in the coming weeks.

Trump is ramping up raids on workplaces to find those in the country unlawfully, and on Monday, will sign an order directing his Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to send him a list of so-called sanctuary cities that aren’t doing enough to cooperate with his deportation efforts, according to Trump officials.

The number of immigration arrests at workplaces has tripled since Trump took office, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Monday. “It’s going to triple again,” Homan said. Trump vowed on the campaign trail to bring back workplace raids, after the Biden administration had largely put a stop to such enforcement tactics.

Over the past week, the Trump administration has increased the tempo of its immigration crackdown. Over the past week, law enforcement agencies in Florida worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Miami office to arrest 800 people who were allegedly in the country unlawfully. And the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security arrested 100 people and allegedly seized drugs and weapons in a joint raid Sunday on a night club in Colorado Springs, Colo., that the Trump administration says was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

The new actions come as the Trump administration tries to push through barriers to its deportation actions. Trump’s Justice Department arrested a county judge in Wisconsin on Friday for allegedly helping an undocumented immigration avoid federal deportation officers, and the Trump administration is facing alarm and scrutiny for deporting three U.S. citizen children with their mothers. And Trump has flouted a Supreme Court order that he “facilitate” the release from prison in El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported from Maryland. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump said he had not asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia “because I haven’t been asked to ask him by my attorneys”

Polling shows that Trump’s immigration actions are losing public support. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll on Friday showed 46% of Americans approved of Trump’s immigration policies, down from a 50% approval rating on the topic in February. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Friday, showed 47% approved and 51% disapproved of his handling of immigration.