WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is greatly expanding the number of people living in the U.S. illegally who are considered a priority for deportation, including people arrested for traffic violations, according to agency documents released Tuesday.The documents represent a sweeping rewrite of the nation’s immigration enforcement priorities.Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald TrumpThe Homeland Security Department memos, signed by Secretary John Kelly, lay out that any immigrant living in the United States illegally who has been charged or convicted of any crime — and even those suspected of a crime — will now be an enforcement priority. Now, immigration agents, customs officers and border patrol agents have been directed to remove anyone convicted of any criminal offence. That could include people arrested for shop lifting or minor traffic offences.Homeland Security said in a fact sheet released Tuesday that any person who is in the U.S. illegally is potentially subject to deportation. The change in enforcement priorities will require a considerable increase in resources. With an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally, the government has long had to set narrower priorities, given the constraints on staffing and money.The memos direct the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to begin hiring 10,000 agents and officers while the Customs and Border Protection agency hires 5,000 new agents.The memos eliminate far more narrow guidance issued under the Obama administration that resources strictly on immigrants who had been convicted of serious crimes, threats to national security and recent border crossers.Kelly’s memo also describes plans to enforce a long-standing but obscure provision of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the government to send some people caught illegally crossing the Mexican border back to Mexico, regardless of where they are from. One of the memos says that forei ...
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