“A senior State Department official who helped negotiate the Trump administration’s controversial ‘third country’ deportation deals with African nations has been nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Cameroon,” the Washington Post reports.

“Christian Ehrhardt, 41, has served since last year as deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugee, and Migration. He oversees the Office of Remigration, created by the administration to facilitate the removal of migrants to countries where they are not citizens.”

“ICE has received more than $75 billion to expand operations since President Trump returned to office — and wasted millions on scaled-back and mismanaged projects, a new GAO report found,” Axios reports.

“In rushing to execute Trump’s mass deportation agenda, the agency failed to properly develop a strategic plan.”

“The most effective escalation of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign happened quietly,” the New York Times reports.

“Unlike earlier high-profile raids that drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the surge in arrests in June, July and August was captured mostly by grainy security camera footage, through cracked blinds and from behind closed doors.”

“Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer soared to record highs since the start of this Trump administration — with 43,000 in June, more than 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August — as officials cut or narrowed the pathways to legal residency in the United States and expanded the pool of people eligible for deportation.”

“In an emergency request Thursday, the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to revive its policy of deporting some migrants to places other than their country of origin, a practice that was struck down by a lower court on the grounds that it violates deportees’ due process rights,” CBS News reports.

“The Trump administration scrambled on Thursday to halt a number of imminent deportations after an appeals court blocked authorities from expelling people to third countries without a chance to contest their cases,” the New York Times reports.

Washington Post: “These ‘third country’ deportation deals, a controversial innovation of the second Trump administration, have become a central part of the president’s hard-line approach to immigration…”

“The Trump administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June.”

“Stephen Miller is leading an unprecedented and intense White House drive across a host of government departments to accelerate the removal of undocumented immigrant children from the U.S. using tactics that critics say are cruel and racist and, in some cases, flout federal law, the Guardian has learned,” The Guardian reports.

“As deputy chief of staff at the White House, focused on immigration policy, Miller is seen as the mastermind and enforcer behind Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration agenda.”

“The Trump administration has started building the border wall through a west Texas section of the Big Bend region, marking the first major construction in an area of the U.S.-Mexico border where the administration’s plans have met with heavy opposition,” the Washington Sun reports.

It seems like bad politics to further antagonize Texas voters just before competitive midterm election races.

“The White House on Thursday withdrew without explanation its nomination of Lance Schroyer to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, less than three months after President Donald Trump selected him to run the agency at the front of his mass deportation campaign,” the Washington Post reports.