At first glance, it would seem that things at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency are going swimmingly. ICE just raided ninety-eight 7-11 stores around the country and arrested a bunch of illegal aliens. ICE's arrests for the 2017 fiscal year are nearly 37% higher than the year before.

The actual number of yearly removals ICE is making in the interior of the country, not counting the border, is still a tiny figure: about 81,000 illegal aliens in the most recent fiscal year. Given that there are more than ten million illegal aliens in the country, removing even a fraction of them will take a long time.

The problem is that ICE doesn't have the manpower to deport millions of aliens. Donald Trump wants to expand their manpower, but so far Congress has not cooperated.

This is not ICE's fault.

What is ICE's fault, however, is how it uses the existing manpower it has. The raid on the ninety-eight 7-11 stores must have involved hundreds of ICE agents, but it netted only 21 illegal aliens. It's great that businesses like 7-11 are given notice that employing illegals is no longer acceptable, but raids like this show that ICE is using its limited manpower terribly inefficiently.

Part of the problem is the leadership. ICE is led by an Obama-era holdover named Thomas Homan. Incredibly, nearly a year after taking office, President Trump still had not appointed his own nominee to run the most important agency related to his most important campaign issue. He finally relented in November...deciding to nominate Homan, the acting director, to take the job on an official basis.

Debbie Schlussel has done some interesting reporting on Homan:

Homan has been running ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), which oversees deportation of illegal aliens, for several years during the Obama [a]dministration. And he's run it into the ground. Maybe that's why the Obama White House honored the guy with an award.

And more:

Earlier this year, I told you about ICE's new, quiet policy of "reverse escorting," in which ICE flies deportation agents from places like Michigan to the Southern border to pick up and fly illegal alien youths back ... to places like Grand Rapids and Detroit and give them sanctuary with pro-illegal alien non-profits, while the aliens await immigration amnesty and/or while the non-profits train them on what to say and help them fraudulently obtain asylum. My article was cited by U.S. [c]ongressman Kerry Bentivolio (R-[Mich.]) in a U.S. House hearing on border security, and Homan was asked about it. Homan predictably lied and claimed that what I wrote wasn't true. In fact, it's all true...in spades. Your money is being spent to escort illegal aliens into the American interior where they are sheltered until they can stay here permanently.

Schlussel also accuses Homan of quite a large number of sexual improprieties, which are unproved allegations but disturbing if true.

Given Homan's involvement in the Obama era, when ICE was turned into babysitters for illegal aliens, it is inexplicable that Trump has nominated him to continue in the job.

What Homan is doing now is a few high-profile "trophy" raids to get press attention but actually yield few results, such as the 21 arrests from the ninety-eight 7-11 raids.

This isn't rocket science. Most illegals live in big urban areas like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami (you can find a map here). The neighborhoods they live in are equally obvious because most people don't speak English in them.

All ICE would have to do is go to these neighborhoods and check for IDs outside shopping centers, supermarkets, drug stores, and other places with high traffic. Just camping out outside of the Department of Motor Vehicles in San Jose would yield more arrests in an hour than the raid of ninety-eight 7-11s did in a day. ICE should camp outside select DMV offices, welfare offices, and other government offices where illegals go for benefits.

They should also check IDs at public schools. The Supreme Court created out of thin air the "right" of illegals to a taxpayer-funded education, but it did not create a right for them to go to school without being apprehended along the way for being in the country illegally. It would be easy to target schools in the neighborhoods of illegals and have ICE checkpoints there. ICE has a policy of not making arrests at schools, but that is just what it is – a self-imposed policy.

Such strategies would result in many more arrests in a shorter period of time. Also, by making their presence known in public facilities, ICE would encourage many more illegals to self-deport.

Under the leadership of an Obama holdover, this is unlikely to happen. Instead, expect more self-congratulatory press releases where 21 illegal immigrants are arrested in a day.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.