Washington, 16 June

US President Donald Trump on Sunday directed federal immigration officials to prioritise deportations from Democratic-run cities after large protests erupted in Los Angeles and other major cities against the Trump administration's immigration policies.

Trump in a social media posting called on ICE officials "to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History".

He added that to reach the goal, officials "must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America's largest cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside".

Trump's declaration comes after weeks of increased enforcement, and after Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump's immigration policies, said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump's second term.

At the same time, the Trump administration has directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, after Trump expressed alarm about the impact aggressive enforcement is having on those industries, according to a US official familiar with the matter who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.