U.S.
Trump officials issue quotas to ICE officers to ramp up arrests
By
The Washington Post January 26, 2025
Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti
The Washington Post January 26, 2025
U.S. Customs and Border Protection security agents guide a group of migrants onboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft assigned to the 60th Air Mobility Wing for a removal flight at Fort Bliss, Texas, on Jan. 23, 2025. (Nicholas J. De La Pena/Department of Defense)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been directed by Trump officials to aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500, because the president has been disappointed with the results of his mass deportation campaign, according to four people with knowledge of the briefings.
The quotas were outlined Saturday in a call with senior ICE officials, who were told that each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets. The four people spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal briefings.
The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials.
White House “border czar” Tom Homan has said for weeks that ICE would not conduct mass roundups and its officers would prioritize immigrants with criminal records and who are gang members. But the quotas issued this weekend would place ICE officers under more pressure to seize a wider range of potential deportees to avoid reprimand, including immigrants who have not committed crimes.
Homan told ABC News in an interview broadcast Sunday that the administration is “in the beginning stages” of its mass deportation plan, and while public safety threats and national security threats are a priority, “as that aperture opens, there’ll be more arrests nationwide.”
ICE announced in a statement Sunday that agents “began conducting enhanced targeted operations today in Chicago,” with help from other federal agencies, including the FBI. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman last week revoked a directive that had essentially barred ICE from arresting immigrants in or around sensitive areas such as schools, hospitals and churches.
An ICE official who was not authorized to discuss the quota said the agency’s list of criminal suspects was sufficiently long that officers would be able to continue prioritizing public safety and national security threats to meet quotas. Last July, ICE told lawmakers there are about 670,000 immigrants on its caseload who have criminal convictions or face criminal charges. Some are currently serving sentences in jails and prisons.
The agency manages a docket of 7.8 million people who potentially face deportation, but many of them have pending claims in the U.S. immigration system or a form of provisional residency status. ICE’s caseload more than doubled during Joe Biden’s presidency amid record numbers of illegal border crossings.
ICE officers deployed aggressively during President Donald Trump’s first week in office, boosting the number of immigrants taken into custody from fewer than 400 on Tuesday to nearly 600 on Friday. The number declined to 286 on Saturday, according to ICE.
Trump’s supporters and others have pointed out that those totals will not yield the “millions” of deportations the president has promised.
Trump made a similar promise during his first term and came up far short, reaching a peak of about 267,000 during the 2019 fiscal year. The Biden administration deported 271,000 last year, the highest annual total in a decade. Trump has long had little patience for explanations of why his goals are not realistic.
ICE officers have been told for years that indiscriminate roundups are unsafe and counterproductive, because they spread panic throughout immigrant communities and produce significant public backlash. ICE and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump officials have told ICE the president expects arrest operations to proceed around-the-clock and that officers should cancel personal leave, according to the four people briefed on the directives.
ICE has about 5,500 officers nationwide working on immigration enforcement, a staffing level that has remained roughly flat for the past decade. The Trump administration took steps to supplement those numbers by deputizing officers and agents at the Department of Justice to investigate immigration violations and make arrests, enlisting personnel from the FBI, U.S. Marshals, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Trump also ordered ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division to shift its focus to immigration enforcement. The agency is DHS’s investigative division for counterterrorism, drug smuggling, human trafficking cases and other crimes.
“Mobilizing these law enforcement officials will help fulfill President Trump’s promise to the American people to carry out mass deportations,” Huffman said in a statement. “For decades, efforts to find and apprehend illegal aliens have not been given proper resources. This is a major step in fixing that problem.”