NBC News reports that top Trump adviser Stephen Miller recently erupted in anger over what he sees as woefully lagging deportation numbers, privately threatening to fire senior Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials over it. He demanded the detention of 3,000 migrants each day, sources told NBC.

It’s not surprising that the failure to impose maximal cruelty and suffering on the vulnerable would infuriate a dime-store fascist like Miller. What’s striking, though, is that this has prompted the administration to devote “more than 5,000 personnel from across federal law enforcement agencies” to arresting undocumented immigrants, per NBC.

This includes 1,800 agents from Homeland Security Investigations, which usually probes crimes that don’t involve noncriminal migrants, NBC reports. It also includes 2,000 employees from law enforcement agencies at the Justice Department, like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

This is already hindering other crime fighting. “Prosecutors say cases without immigration components have stalled or are moving more slowly,” reports NBC, adding that federal law enforcement officials say the “increased focus on cases with an immigration angle is pulling resources from other law enforcement priorities.”.....

It is very likely that majorities would find those priorities deeply demented. As Fleischaker, the former ICE official, told me: “The idea that immigration enforcement is the most significant national security and public safety concern that we as a country face is deeply unserious.”

Which gives Democrats a strong case to make: Trump’s twisted ideological obsession with deporting moms—and other unauthorized immigrants who have committed no serious crimes—is detracting from the fight against transnational gangs, drug trafficking, and child exploitation.

To Trump and Miller, all those unauthorized immigrant moms really do constitute a national emergency. But there’s no way majorities agree with this. Democrats: Miller’s private outbursts reveal a new kind of Achilles’ heel on this issue—time to seize on it, and prosecute the case accordingly.