Donald Trump’s government is instructing immigration authorities to increase irregular immigrant arrests to 3,000 per day, with a goal of over 1 million a year, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The guideline was delivered at a recent meeting led by Trump senior counselor Stephen Miller and internal security secretary Kristi Noem, the source said, which spoke on anonymity.
The tone of the discussion has left some high employees concerned about being fired or relocated if the goals were not met, according to the source.
The meeting and the new goals were previously reported by the Axios and confirmed by The Guardian.
“We are committed to removing illegal immigrants from the United States aggressively and efficiently, and ensuring that our law agents have the necessary resources for it,” said White House spokesman Abigail Jackson in a statement on Wednesday. “The security of the American people depends on it.
The internal security department repeated this feeling in its own statement, saying that it was complying with President Trump’s initiative to “arrest and deport criminal illegal immigrants and make America safe.”
Trump made the rigorous supervision of immigration a fundamental issue of his presidency, promising to make the biggest deportation effort in US history. But so far, the scale of illegal migrant arrests in the country has largely remained in line with that of the previous government.
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In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, which began in January, the US customs service (ICE) reported that he had deported about 65,000 people. During the final stretch of Joe Biden’s government, ICE arrested an average of 759 migrants a day, according to federal data from the University of Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Access.
The new goal of arrests seems to be part of a broader strategy to accelerate removals. Earlier this year, the government expanded program 287 (G), which delegates to the state and local police to carry out arrests related to immigrants. ICE has also published contract offerings of up to $ 45 billion to expand detention capacity in immigration arrests.
At the same time, the government has sent thousands of troops to the southwest border, where crossings have fallen in recent months to levels not seen since the 1960s.
