The trump administration is working hard to convince the public that its mass-deportation campaign is fully under way. Over the past several weeks, federal agents have seized foreign students off the streets, raided worksites, and shipped detainees to a supermax prison in El Salvador using wartime powers adopted under the John Adams administration.

The tactics have spread fear and created a showreel of social-media-ready highlights for the White House. But they have not brought U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement much closer to delivering the “millions” of deportations President Donald Trump has set as a goal.

“We need more money,” Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” told me in an interview. “We won’t fail if we get the resources we need.”

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