The Trump administration’s mass deportation raids have already taken 20,000 illegal migrants off the streets in the first month — which is almost as many ICE caught under the Biden administration last year, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Arrests of at-large illegal immigrants for all of fiscal year 2024 totaled 33,000, according to DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
In one of the immigration sweeps that took place Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents collared 118 illegal migrants, including child rapists, gangbangers and killers in the notorious migrant “colonia” of Colony Ridge, Texas.
However, Trump administration officials are still not happy with the pace of arrests — and they’re pushing ICE to nab more illegal migrants more quickly.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, recently expressed his dissatisfaction with the pace of the ICE arrests and deportations.
“If you look at the rest of interior enforcement, it’s about three times higher than it was a year ago today. Three times higher is good, but I’m not satisfied,” Homan told NewsNation.
“There are more criminal aliens that need to be arrested, hundreds of thousands.”
He added: “Sanctuary cities are putting roadblocks up. We’ve got leaks. So we need to increase the arrests of illegal aliens, especially those with criminal convictions. So we’re going to continue.”
All the while, the agency has been scrambling to find detention space to hold captured illegal immigrants, according to Homeland Security sources.
ICE is already “burning well over” their funding for 41,500 detention beds “to the tune of several hundred million dollars,” forcing the agency to open up four federal prison facilities, said a source.
“Some of the challenges associated with that have been the fact that we weren’t able to do all that much prior to the [Trump] administration,” the source said.
President Trump has also opened the doors of Guantanamo Bay to hold up to 30,000 illegal immigrants.
While ICE arrests are on the rise, border agents are seeing fewer migrants crossing into the US illegally.
In the first eleven days of February, about 359 illegal migrants per day had been caught across the entire southern border — down more than 90% from February 2024, according to leaked Customs and Border Protection data.
If the trend continues, border crossings could hit 60 year lows.
In recent days, border crossings have fallen below 200, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
