As the libertarian Cato Institute reports, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shifted away from prioritizing deportation of suspected criminals, like the illegal immigrant who had been arrested and released for theft and threatening a minor before murdering nursing student Lakin Riley, to instead "focus on asylum seekers at courthouses, immigrants who regularly check in with ICE, and other non-threats" who are easier to find and arrest.

The morality and political sustainability of this shift is questionable. And ironically, as agents say privately, ICE will now deport more people but leave Americans less safe by deporting fewer dangerous people, defying common sense.

So why is ICE doing it? Because the top brass in Washington set a quota to arrest 3,000 illegal immigrants a day before the organization grew to handle the mission. As one ICE agent complained to the New York Post, "all that matters is numbers, pure numbers; quantity over quality."

For bureaucrats, politicians and educators, imposing quotas is nothing new and nothing good. They promise shortcuts to success but bring dehumanizing failure.

Back in the Vietnam War, as James Clay Thompson notes in "Rolling Thunder": Understanding........

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