New ICE focus is cruel and damaging

Amid a broad-based backlash against a wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations across the country, the Trump administration suddenly appears to be reversing course by stepping back from raids on farms, restaurants, hotels and meatpacking plants. Amid the backtrack, Department of Homeland Security officials seem to acknowledge that White House adviser Stephen Miller’s recent shouted demand for 3,000 ICE arrests per day would prove unlikely to be fulfilled. This should be a limited dose of potentially positive news for businesses whose staffs have recently been decimated.

"Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace," President Donald Trump wrote last week on social media.

Surely, that couldn’t be a surprise to the president, who has been warned repeatedly about the dire economic consequences of truly mass deportations. There are myriad personal and community consequences as well. Consider a much-loved Port Washington bagel shop manager who emigrated from El Salvador about 20 years ago and was detained on a deportation order for allegedly overstaying his visa. His legal fate, and that of other Long Island immigrants who became contributing members of the community here, remain unknown as residents rally on his behalf, raising $16,000 in one day in a GoFundMe effort for his legal costs. It is only sensible that local activists and community organizers are working amid the mass arrests to get immigrants’ names, discover where they are jailed, and offer legal representation, part of a growing pushback to this intimidating show of federal force.

ICE insists its arrests are aimed primarily at those involved in criminal activity. But setting high quotas and keeping information secret doesn’t add credibility to that claim. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem might convince citizens that sweeps are not arbitrarily carried out and it’s "fake news" to say otherwise if she released more information such as the names and specifics of arrests after the fact.

But as with the administration’s start-and-stop tariff and "efficiency" programs, this process is far less transparent and disciplined than it should be. For example, Noem’s department recently included Suffolk County and East Hampton on a list of alleged "sanctuary jurisdictions" that quickly vanished without explanation from the agency’s website. Nor does it build credibility, or persuade anybody undocumented to come in from the shadows, when Trump recites fables such as Democrats in big cities use "illegal aliens" to cheat in elections.

Impulsive executive orders and randomly enforced laws lead to confusion and dysfunction. This deportation program with a seemingly impossible goal of expelling 11 million individuals from the U.S. was undertaken without judicial or congressional consideration. It's impossible to see how even the short-term results in our communities will look without real thought and planning — of which there seems to be little so far.