Trump: Removal of undocumented immigrants is ‘military operation’

President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration’s efforts to remove undocumented immigrants is a “military operation.”

“You see what’s happening at the border, all of the sudden for the first time, we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country,” Trump said at a meeting with manufacturing CEOs. “And at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before, and they’re the bad ones, and it’s a military operation because that has been allowed to come into our country. And you see gang violence that you’ve read about like never before, all of the things, much of that is people that are here illegally. And they’re rough and they’re tough but they’re not tough like our people.”

His praise focused on the Department of Homeland Security head John Kelly, whose department oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — best known as "ICE."

Kelly, Trump said, has “been unbelievable at the border.”

The comment was surprising given that ICE and the border patrol are civilian, not military, organizations. The comments about undocumented immigrants being responsible for “much” of the violence in the U.S. is also dubious, as studies do not indicate that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crime.

The remarks came as Kelly is in Mexico with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on what Trump said will be a “tough trip.”

Trump recently directed DHS to ramp up enforcement of immigration laws, prioritizing for deportation those undocumented immigrants who present a danger to public safety, but not limiting deportations to that group. The White House aims to boost both the number of deportations and the speed at which deportations take place.

Kelly said later Thursday that the military is not being used in deportations. Press secretary Sean Spicer told the media Thursday afternoon that Trump was using the word “military” as an adjective to refer to the precision with which the deportations are taking place, not the use of the military.