Operation Shockwave - Trump’s Major Overhaul at ICE

Washington is once again on the brink of an earthquake - this time not in the White House, but in the gray corridors of the agency that Donald Trump has turned more than any other into his personal instrument: Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to consistent reports from several government insiders, the administration is planning a sweeping internal restructuring within ICE to accelerate deportations. Senior officials in several regional offices across the country would be affected - about half a dozen positions are under review. The reason is as simple as it is brutal: frustration in the White House. Trump’s goal - more than a million deportations in the first year of his second term - has drifted far out of reach. According to the Department of Homeland Security, around 400,000 people have been deported so far, and 600,000 are expected by the end of the year. But even that number is misleading, since the government counts those who were turned away at the border and never lived in the United States as deportations.

Inside ICE conference rooms, pressure, fear, and exhaustion have dominated for months. “People are burned out. It’s a culture of intimidation,” says Claire Trickler-McNulty, once a senior ICE official under President Biden. “They’re constantly moving chairs around, but no one has the strength to face the real problems anymore.” The sequence of firings and reassignments has pushed the agency into a state of permanent nervousness - and that now seems to be the method. At its core, it is about speed. Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller, who has directed the mass deportation project from the beginning, had already met with ICE leadership in the spring. A few days later, he appeared on Fox News and publicly set a target: 3,000 arrests per day. Shortly afterward, the numbers actually shot up - to more than 2,000 daily arrests. But the euphoria did not last long. Since the summer, the number has settled at around 1,000 - too low for a president who measures success in numbers.

The White House has long viewed ICE as the key engine of its domestic agenda. Trump and his spokeswoman Abigail Jackson repeat like a mantra that the administration is acting “in lock step,” like clockwork, to “end illegal immigration.” But in reality, this clockwork is grinding. The deportation machine is running hot, but not precise. While Border Patrol agents in Texas and Arizona carry out ever-larger raids in housing complexes, supermarkets, and parking lots, ICE teams continue to focus on targeted arrests of individuals - a strategy that is legally safer but time-consuming. Trump’s team wants to change that: less precision, more volume. The message is clear - every face counts, every plane ticket, every statistic.

Inside the agency, many officials fear that the planned reshuffle could completely tear apart its fragile structure. More than two dozen regional directors oversee vast territories - such as the entire West, including California, Nevada, and Arizona, or the densely populated states of the Northeast. They coordinate detention centers, transports, court schedules, and medical care. Their dismissal could cause months of disruption, but that seems to bother no one in Washington. “The Department of Homeland Security remains focused on results and on removing violent criminal illegal aliens,” reads a cool statement from spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin. “As for personnel decisions, we have nothing to announce.” It is the usual phrase agencies use when everything has already been decided.

Behind the scenes, Trump is shifting ICE’s center of power increasingly to the border regions. While the number of detainees in ICE custody has risen to over 60,000, the agency’s budget was raised to 28 billion dollars in the new fiscal plan - a record. The goal: more detention space, more transports, more deportations. The city centers are supposed to look cleaner, the headlines more patriotic. But the image of efficiency is deceptive. In reality, complaints about faulty data, mistaken identities, and unlawful detentions are piling up. Even conservative lawyers warn that the legal foundations for many of the so-called “expedited procedures” are untenable. “If you want to deport a million people in a year, you have to bend - or break - the law,” says a former ICE legal adviser who wishes to remain anonymous.

That Trump is willing to do both no longer surprises anyone. The president sees ICE not as an agency but as a stage - and the stage only works as long as it produces fear. The planned purge among regional directors is part of that performance. Loyalty replaces experience, speed replaces accuracy, and brutality replaces law.

Even before the plans are official, signs of nervousness are growing in field offices. Some directors have reportedly already been contacted by Washington, others report unusually intense reviews of their operational reports. Emails circulate with the sentence that now reads like a mantra: “The President wants more.” More deportations, more images, more control. But the numbers Trump boasts about are misleading - and the stories behind them humanly devastating. In many cities, from Chicago to San Diego, families live in constant fear that an ordinary morning could mark the end of their life in America.

The overhaul at ICE shows what becomes of a country when power no longer binds itself to law, but to mood. An agency once meant to stand for legality is turning into a tool of political severity. And while the president speaks of efficiency, what is being switched off inside this machine, piece by piece, is the human element.