ICE adopts new mission with potential impact on illegal immigrants
President Donald Trump has set immigration enforcement officials a lofty new target of conducting 3,000 arrests every single day in an ambitious effort to ramp up his deportation agenda. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the new goal is only temporary and the number of daily arrests expected under the Trump administration will continue to rise.
'Under President Trump's leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day,' Miller told Fox News' Sean Hannity. Trump's border czar Tom Homan (pictured) backed the ambitious new benchmark on Thursday morning, insisting: 'We've gotta increase these arrests and removals. The numbers are good, but I'm not satisfied. I haven't been satisfied all year long.'
During Trump's first 100 days back in office, ICE officials arrested 66,463 illegal immigrants. More than 65,000 illegal immigrants were deported. Some 17,000 deportees had criminal convictions or charges ranging from driving under the influence to assault or weapons offenses. ICE has boasted removing gang members, murderers and child rapists.
But the administration has faced significant pushback and legal hurdles with challenges to the legality of some of the deportation schemes, particularly those which saw foreign aliens sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison under the wartime Illegal Aliens Act. Other migrants have been banished to third party nations with little to no legal pathway to challenge their deportations. ICE deported 17,200 people in April alone - roughly 4,000 more than the number conducted in April 2024, under former president Joe Biden.
There have been reports for months that Trump has been unsatisfied with the progress of agents on the ground, who have discovered that tracking down illegal migrants - particularly criminals - is more difficult and a slower process than they initially expected. Across the United States in immigration courts from New York to Seattle last week, Homeland Security officials began ramping up enforcement actions and carrying out mass arrests in an effort to boost their numbers.
Three US immigration officials said government attorneys were given the order to start dismissing cases when they showed up for work Monday, knowing full well that federal agents would then have a free hand to arrest those same individuals as soon as they stepped out of the courtroom. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared losing their jobs.
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