Trump's Deportation Quota Comes Under Scrutiny
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Attorneys for the Trump administration have denied that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were directed to meet a daily quota for arrests or deportations.
In a court filing submitted on Friday, lawyers for the Department of Justice (DOJ) said "neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that ICE or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law."
Newsweek has contacted the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.
Agents survey migrants coming for their hearings at an immigration court in New York.
Agents survey migrants coming for their hearings at an immigration court in New York.
Andrea Renault/STAR MAX/IPx
Why It Matters
White House officials have previously referenced a daily goal of at least 3,000 arrests. President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to remove millions of migrants without legal status to fulfill his campaign pledge of mass deportations. The Republicans' hard-line immigration policy has raised concerns over racial profiling from immigrant rights advocates.
What To Know
In May, Axios reported that Trump aide Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem were pressuring ICE to increase daily immigration arrests to three times the number recorded at the beginning of Trump's presidency, signaling a shift toward a more aggressive enforcement strategy.
Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a homeland security adviser, told Fox News host Sean Hannity at the time that the agency was looking to hit 3,000 ICE arrests per day.
In the government's filing on Friday, attorneys said claims of a policy mandating 3,000 immigration arrests per day appeared to stem from media reports quoting a White House adviser, who characterized the number as a "goal" the administration was "looking to set" rather than an official directive or mandate.
"That quotation may have been accurate, but no such goal has been set as a matter of policy, and no such directive has been issued to or by DHS or ICE," attorneys wrote in court filings.
The filing is part of an ongoing lawsuit in Southern California, where immigrant advocacy organizations have accused the Trump administration of carrying out unconstitutional immigration enforcement operations in the Los Angeles area.
When federal judges sought clarification about that number last week, the administration denied the existence of any quota. This denial contradicted claims made in a lawsuit alleging that the high pressure to meet arrest targets led ICE to carry out unlawful raids in Los Angeles.
During the July 28 appeal hearing, Judge Ronald M. Gould pressed Department of Justice attorney Jacob Roth to explain the origin of the reported 3,000 daily arrest target, asking whether it came from ICE, the president or another official, Los Angeles Daily News reported. Roth said he was not aware of any such policy, according to the outlet.
There were about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States as of 2022, according to Pew Research Center. Trump has vowed to deport 1 million people in a year.
What People Are Saying
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told Hannity in May: "We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day so we can get all of the Biden illegals that were flooded into our country for four years out of our country."
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, said in a statement: "Secretary Noem unleashed ICE to target the worst of the worst and carry out the largest deportation operation of criminal aliens in American history."
Department of Justice attorney Jacob Roth wrote in a letter to the court: "Enforcement activity is firmly anchored in binding legal constraints—constitutional, statutory, and regulatory requirements that apply at every stage, from identification to arrest to custody—with multiple layers of supervisory review to ensure compliance with the law. This framework, not anonymous reports in the newspapers, governs ICE's operations."
What Happens Next
A ruling is expected in the coming months as the court weighs the scope of ICE's enforcement authority.
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