DOJ Scrambles to Get Distance From Stephen Miller’s Immigration Plan

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s ideology is making it difficult for federal authorities to actually meet his deportation quota.

The Justice Department is trying to distance itself from Miller and his expectations for federal agents to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day. In the midst of a lawsuit over ICE’s illegal sweeps in Los Angeles, the department informed federal judges that no such official quota existed.

“DHS has confirmed that neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that ICE or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law,” a Justice Department attorney reported to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth attributed the number to “anonymous reports in the newspapers,” but that’s not true. Miller was recorded stating the goal in May, when he told Fox News unequivocally that the administration was “looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every day.”

The discrepancy between what White House advisers are willing to say on live air versus in court could boil down to a growing “gulf” that “may be undermining the DOJ’s already strained credibility with judges,” reported Politico. Skeptical judges have pointed to the figure as grounds to question whether the Trump administration’s immigration objectives are even legal.

Yet a Justice Department spokesperson insisted to the publication that there was no divergence between the White House and the law enforcement agency regarding its immigration stats and orders.

“The entire Trump Administration is united in fully enforcing our nation’s immigration laws and the DOJ continues to play an important role in vigorously defending the President’s deportation agenda in court,” a DOJ spokesperson told Politico.