New ICE deportation operation and possible dwarf planet discovery: Morning Rundown

NBC News

3 days ago

A sweeping new ICE operation shows how Donald Trump's focus on immigration is reshaping federal law enforcement. Higher steel tariffs kick in. A potential new dwarf planet is identified. And food maker Campbell's says more people are reaching for pantry staples over snacks.
Here's what to know today.
Trump's immigration crackdown is reshaping federal law enforcement
The Trump administration's largest immigration crackdown yet is underway, but the reallocation of personnel from other federal law enforcement agencies in order to carry out 'Operation At Large' is causing tension among some officials who feel they've been taken off core national security missions.
The new ICE-led initiative is a response to frustration from White House chief of staff Stephen Miller over what he saw as numbers of arrests and deportations of unauthorized immigrants that were too low. Miller is so frustrated, two sources said, that he has berated and threatened to fire senior ICE officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day. He also threatened to fire leaders of field offices posting the bottom 10% of arrest numbers monthly.
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According to the operation plan, the initiative calls on help from thousands of personnel, including:
→ 3,000 ICE agents, including 1,800 from Homeland Security Investigations, which generally investigates transnational crimes;
→ 2,000 Justice Department employees from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and the DEA;
→ 500 employees from Customs and Border Protection; and
→ 250 IRS agents, some of whom may be used to provide tax information on the whereabouts of immigrants using tax information, and others who would have the authority to make arrests.
The operation is the latest example of how President Donald Trump's push for mass deportations is reshaping federal law enforcement, leaving less time and attention for other types of criminal investigations.
Now, FBI agents are joining in on immigration-related law enforcement operations, which at one time would have been unusual. DOJ teams focused on other issues are being disbanded so members can dedicate their time to immigration and other administration priorities. Federal courts are regularly seeing misdemeanor cases for border crossings, a rarity in recent years. And federal cases without immigration components have stalled or are moving more slowly.
'There is such a priority on making immigration arrests that it takes longer to get answers on anything else,' a law enforcement official said. 'Something that used to be resolved in a matter of days now takes weeks.'
Trump's executive order raising steel tariffs from 25% to 50% is now in effect, giving one of the country's most storied industries a massive boost at the potential cost of a broader economic slowdown.
Elon Musk called the GOP bill for Trump's agenda a 'disgusting abomination' for the legislation's proposal to add more than $2 trillion to the budget deficit.
The White House wants congressional leaders to codify $9.4 billion budget cuts, mostly to foreign aid but also to cuts proposed by DOGE and to NPR and PBS.
The Navy said it will rename the USNS Harvey Milk, the vessel named for the LGBTQ rights pioneer.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is pushing a 'more is more' approach when it comes to Democrats' response to the Trump administration, but some argue it's not a winning strategy.
How measles tore through a remote West Texas city
On a Saturday in mid-March in the tiny West Texas city of Seminole, Dr. Ben Edwards put on his scrubs and drove to a sheet metal building to treat children with measles. Red spots mottled his face; Edwards was sick with measles, too.
An outbreak of the disease was swelling in Gaines County, a rural community with one of the lowest childhood vaccination rates in the country. For two weeks, lines of families had snaked around the building's parking lot, almost all belonging to the area's Mennonite community. Edwards handed out cod liver oil and prescribed steroid inhalers. And down the road at Seminole's only hospital, a waiting room made for measles patients often sat empty, and there was little demand for vaccines — the only proven way of preventing the disease.
So two responses were in motion to deal with an extremely contagious disease — one grounded in science and evidence, and the other driven by distrust and propaganda and, for the first time in memory, backed by the federal government under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The story of Seminole in those critical months offers a look behind the battle lines, as well as a warning for a country increasingly fractured not just by politics but by competing realities.
They set out to find 'Planet Nine' — and instead turned up a different resident in our cosmic backyard. Researchers at Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University said they have discovered a possible dwarf planet at the edge of the solar system. Measuring at an estimated 435 miles across, it's significantly smaller than Pluto, which measures nearly 1,500 miles across. And it's so far-flung that it takes around 25,000 years to complete one orbit around the sun.
Researchers said they found the dwarf planet candidate by sifting through a huge data set from a telescope in Chile that was scanning the universe for evidence of dark energy. If confirmed, the object known as 2017 OF201 could be what research group leader Sihao Cheng called an 'extreme cousin' of Pluto.
In the meantime, the search for 'Planet Nine,' a hypothetical planet larger than Earth that is thought to orbit beyond Neptune, is still on. Read the full story here.
The wife and five children of the suspect accused of launching an antisemitic attack that injured 12 people in Boulder, Colorado, were taken into ICE custody, the White House said. Meanwhile, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who was burned during the attack spoke publicly for the first time since the incident.
Ukraine's audacious 'Spiderweb' drone attack on Russian air bases highlights how both sides are increasingly turning to cheap, commercially available devices that can be converted into deadly weapons and have huge impacts on the war.
A Washington state man is wanted on first-degree murder charges in the killings of his three daughters, who were found dead after they did not return from a planned visitation.
The New York Knicks fired head coach Tom Thibodeau a day after the team finished its deepest run in the NBA playoffs in decades.
Campbell's expects one, NBC News producer Steve Kopack reports. The food maker says customers are shying away from snacks and prioritizing pantry basics, like condensed soup and mac-and-cheese, to save money. Consumers' economic outlooks have improved in recent weeks, but pessimism runs deep amid ongoing trade war uncertainty. And while inflation has cooled sharply, many shoppers are still adjusting to much higher costs. With restaurant menu prices still rising nearly twice as fast as those on grocery shelves, Campbell's is seeing people cook meals at home at the highest levels since the depths of the pandemic. — Rich Bellis, senior business editor
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