CHANGE: DHS issues sweeping rules for immigration crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday released details on how it will prosecute undocumented immigrants and criminal immigrants under President Trump.

The two memos from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly expand immigration raids and the definition of criminal aliens, while diminishing sanctuary areas and enlisting local law enforcement to execute federal immigration policy.

Under the rules, federal officers will no longer consider any category of “removable alien” as exempt from removal, except for those protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program started under President Obama.

In a call to explain the policy changes, officials from DHS insisted that they are not seeking to begin a program of mass deportations in the United States.

“We do not have the personnel, time or resources to go into communities and round up people and do all kinds of mass throwing folks on buses. That’s entirely a figment of folks’ imagination,” said DHS official on a press call, according to the Washington Post.

“This is not intended to produce mass roundups, mass deportations.”

Yet the memos appear designed to set the stage for an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration, with law enforcement officials granted new powers to carry out deportations.

I wonder if Trump will deport as many people as Obama did?