President Donald Trump issued new orders as part of his plan to increase mass deportations of illegal migrants — a daily quota of arrests for border officials.
In a Saturday phone call with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, Trump aides said the president was unhappy with the number of arrests and wanted them increased from a few hundred a day to 1,200 to 1,500 a day, the Washington Post reported.
ICE officials were told that each field office was required to make 75 arrests per day and that managers would be held responsible if that number was not reached.
White House communications director Steven Cheung called the quota story “fake news” but did not elaborate.
News of the quota requirement has drawn criticism from officials concerned that it will increase its participation arbitrary arrests or being charged with civil rights violations as they try to meet their numbers.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents knock on the door of a home during a targeted multi-agency enforcement operation in Chicago
Trump campaigned on strengthening the US border and cracking down on illegal immigration.
He has already started; a nationwide crackdown on Sunday resulted in the arrest of 956 people.
“We're taking out the bad, tough criminals,” the president told DailyMail.com on Friday.
'These are murderers. These are people who have been as bad as they can be. Just as bad as anyone you've ever seen. We'll take them out first.'
And his reign has only just begun.
Trump has already sent troops to the border and signed multiple executive orders giving his administration the power to crack down on migrants.
The president also became embroiled in a temporary tariff war with Colombia on Sunday after that country's president, Gustavo Petro, prevented two US military planes full of their citizens from landing amid the US' mass deportation effort.
Trump threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff on Colombian imports, which he withdrew when Colombia withdrew and allowed the planes to land.
Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, said Sunday that the number of arrests will increase.
“You're going to see the numbers steadily increasing, the number of arrests across the country,” he told ABC's This Week.
“Right now it's focused on threats to public safety, threats to national security. That's a smaller population. So we're going to do this on a priority basis, that's President Trump's promise. But if that gap opens, there will be more arrests nationwide.”
And he told NBC News that the goal is to “catch as many criminals as possible.”
“I don't have a quota,” he said. “My instructions to them: arrest as many as you can.”
Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, said: 'You're going to see the numbers steadily increase, the number of arrests across the country'
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents load detained migrants onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III for a relocation flight at Tucson International Airport
Chicago was among the cities where officials made mass arrests this weekend.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat seen as a possible 2028 presidential candidate, expressed concern.
He told CNN on Sunday that he found it “troubling” that officials indicated they would also target “law-abiding” residents, those “who have jobs, who have families here, who may have lived here for a decade or so.” for twenty years, and often it is our neighbors and our friends.
“Why are we going after them?” he said. “These are not people who are causing problems in our country, and what we need is a path to citizenship for them.”
“We have to secure our border. “We need to get rid of violent criminals, but we also need to protect people, at least the people of Illinois and across the country, who are just doing what we hope immigrants will do,” he said.
Pritzkler said he was not given advance notice of the raids and that local Chicago police were not involved.
The Trump administration has deployed several law enforcement agencies within the Justice Department — the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals — to support operations in Chicago and other cities to support.
