Trump admin raises ICE quota to 1,200-1,500 arrests a day: report

President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing the US Immigration and customs control increase the number of arrests per day from a few hundred to at least 1,200 to 1,500 people, according to a new report released Monday.

Citing four sources who spoke on condition of anonymity about an alleged internal call with ICE officials on Saturday, The Washington Post first reported the new target, categorizing the 1,200 to 1,500 daily targets as “quotas.”

During the call, each ICE field office was told to aim for 75 arrests per day and that management would be held accountable if the quotas were not met, they said. The Post also reported that current and former ICE officials said they are concerned that the quotas make it more likely that agents will “engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face allegations of rights violations civilians”.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Post via email that “your story is false,” but did not elaborate. When asked about the report, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) clarified, telling Fox News Digital: “Targets is the correct phrase.”

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“The bottom line is that DHS enforcement, whether at the border or inland, must keep and remove criminal aliens from the country,” the spokesman added.

Fox News Digital also reached out to Leavitt and ICE about the report.

Later in its report, the Washington Post quoted another anonymous ICE official who reportedly said the agency already has a long list of criminal suspects, so agents could continue to target to public safety and threats to national security to meet quotas.

Last week, Acting DHS Secretary Benjamin Huffman rescinded a directive that had prevented ICE from conducting immigration enforcement in sensitive places like churches, schools and doctors’ offices. Huffman said the reversal ensured that criminals, including murderers and rapists, cannot use these areas to hide. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, further defended the decision Sunday, explaining that many MS-13 gang members are typically around 14 years old and ICE agents are well trained and should have the discretion to eliminate threats to public safety and national security.

In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Homan said the number of immigration-related arrests would be “constantly increasing” as Trump’s mass deportation plan continues.

“The opening right now is limited to public safety threats, national security threats as a smaller population,” Homan said. “We’re going to do the same priority basis as President Trump promised. But as this opening opens, there will be more arrests across the country.”

In sanctuary cities, Homan said, ICE is locked up in jails. This means that instead of being able to safely apprehend targets already in custody before they are released back onto the streets, ICE agents must conduct enforcement operations in the community, increasing the risk of collateral arrests of illegal immigrants not charged with violent crimes, but law enforcement. find association with criminal illegal immigrants and also arrest them.

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“Garbage doesn’t happen anywhere,” Homan told Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, inside the ICE Command Center in Chicago on Sunday night. The border czar and TV doctor teamed up to show McGraw’s streaming service, Meritt TV, how ICE operations target violent criminals. Another video shared on Sunday night showed Dr. Phil interrogating an illegal immigrant, a convicted sex offender from Thailand that federal agents arrested in Chicago.

Over the past decade, ICE has had a staffing level of about 5,500 agents nationwide dedicated to immigration enforcement, according to the Post.

Trump has directed Homeland Security Investigations, the DHS agency focused on counterterrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and child exploitation, to also help with enforcement operations. immigration

Last week, Huffman also issued a directive Department of Justice United States law enforcement officials, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Federal Bureau of Prisons authority to investigate and detain illegal immigrants.

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“Thanks to the last administration’s open border policies, we’ve seen violent criminals and gang members terrorize American communities,” Huffman said in a statement. “The mobilization of these law enforcement officials will help fulfill President Trump’s promise to the American people to carry out mass deportations. For decades, efforts to find and detain illegal aliens have been under-resourced. This is an important step in solving this problem.”