The Left Needs A Stephen Miller

 Everybody on the intertoobs says so:

It’s not the only case that has featured the 3,000-arrest-per-day target as a crucial piece of evidence that the administration’s single-minded drive to rack up arrests may have prompted immigration authorities to cut corners or break the law. Washington-based Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, cited the figure when she ruled Friday that the administration’s dramatic expansion of “expedited” deportation proceedings violated the law. And Judge Trina Thompson, a Biden appointee in San Francisco, pointed to the purported goal Thursday when she blocked the administration’s bid to end temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Nicaraguan, Honduran and Nepali immigrants.

But on Friday, the Justice Department said no such orders had ever been given.

“DHS has confirmed that neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that ICE or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law,” a Justice Department attorney reported to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday.

While DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth attributed the quota claim to “anonymous reports in the newspapers,” he didn’t mention that Miller — Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser — had publicly confirmed the 3,000-daily-arrest “goal” in the televised interview on Fox.

The discrepancy is the latest example of a gulf between what White House advisers say in public and what the Justice Department says in court. In this instance, the chasm may be undermining the DOJ’s already strained credibility with judges.

During the arguments Monday, the appeals judges assigned to the case pressed the Justice Department for an answer on whether ICE officers were under pressure to meet some numerical target that might encourage them to detain people based on grounds that fall short of the “reasonable suspicion” the law required.

Roth conceded that such a quota, if it existed, could support claims that some arrests did not meet the legal standard. But he said it wouldn’t justify the proactive order that Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong imposed three weeks ago, barring “roving” arrests in the federal judicial district centered in Los Angeles.

We also need a DOJ that has no credibility with the courts. Onward to victory!

I’ll retire to Bedlam…