[throwing_away]

You're both right. It was an issue before. It's an issue now too.

It might even be less of an issue now, practically, because of budget cuts.

But it will be perceived as a bigger issue than whatever the reality is because of the rhetoric.

Incidentally, when the ICE deportations started, the heated rhetoric was an explicit part of the strategy to spook people into "self-deporting".

I have no idea if this worked or not, but I believe the reason was due to not having enough budget or staff to do the scale of deportations that the administration wanted to do.