WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that federal immigration authorities should focus on deportations in cities run by Democrats. This directive comes in response to significant protests in Los Angeles and other large cities against his administration’s immigration strategies.

In a social media statement, Trump urged ICE officials “to do everything possible to accomplish the crucial goal of implementing the biggest Mass Deportation Program in history.”

He further stated that to accomplish this goal, officials “need to intensify efforts to detain and deport Undocumented Immigrants in America’s major cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions of undocumented individuals live.”

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 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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 U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke only on condition of anonymity.