US Officials "Yelled At" To Triple Daily Immigrant Arrests To 3,000: Report

In a meeting last week, top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to seek to arrest 3,000 people a day, Axios wrote in a report.

This new target is triple the amount of arrests agents were making during the early days of Trump's second term. 

As a part of Trump's "big beautiful bill" that passed the House last week, Capitol Hill Republicans are working on providing an extra $147 billion in immigration funds over the next 10 years.

The change comes when border-crossing numbers have plummeted during the first few months of Trump's term, when officials are taking an increasingly aggressive approach to make arrests of non-border communities nationwide.

Trump's relentless approach to round up unauthorised immigrants, and in some instances even US citizens and legal residents, have caused his poll numbers on immigration to slip.

Miller, the White House's deputy chief of staff, demanded in a meeting on 21st May, that field office directors and special agents in charge get deportation numbers up. According to the source, people left the meeting fearing the new targets, if not reached, might hamper their jobs. However, another person said that Miller was just trying to motivate people with a harsh tone. The sources also added that this is not the first time Miller had yelled at on senior DHS officials to ramp up deportation numbers.

Moreover, DHS and ICE have posted out requests for additional staffing, bed space and resources. The latter has also signed agreements to add more bed space to existing detention spaces in the country.

Although through the media reports, and deportation flight announcements, it seems like the Trump administration has accelerated the arrests, the numbers seem to roughly be the same as they were during President Biden's last year in office.

According to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an independent organisation, border-area deportations have lowered because migrants are not attempting to cross the United States border. However, they have increased removals from inside the country.

"Keeping President Trump's promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. "We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so. The safety of the American people depends upon it."