President Donald Trump's administration is pushing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase the number of arrests per day from a few hundred to between at least 1,200 to 1,500 people, according to a new report on Monday.
Citing four sources who spoke on condition of anonymity about a purported internal call with ICE officials on Saturday, The Washington Post first reported about the new objective, 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 responsible if the quotas were not reached, they said. The Post also reported that current and former ICE officials said that they are concerned that the quotas make it more likely that agents will "engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reportedly told the Post via an 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, "Goals is the correct phrasing."
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"The bottom line is DHS enforcement, whether they be at the border or the interior, needs to keep and get criminal aliens out of the country," the spokesperson added.
Fox News Digital also reached out to Leavitt and ICE regarding the report.
Later in its report, the Washington Post cited another unnamed ICE official who reportedly said that the agency already has a long list of criminal suspects, so agents could continue to target public safety and national security threats to reach the quotas.
Last week, acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman rescinded a directive that had prevented ICE from carrying out immigration enforcement at sensitive locations such as churches, schools and doctor's offices. Huffman said the reversal ensured criminals, including murderers and rapists, cannot use those areas to hide. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, further defended the decision on Sunday, explaining that many MS-13 gang members are often around age 14 and ICE agents are well-trained and should have the discretion to weed out public safety and national security threats.
In an appearance on ABC's "This Week," Homan said the number of immigration-related arrests would "steadily increase" as he continues Trump's mass deportation plan.
"The aperture right now is constrained to public safety threats, national security threats as a smaller population," Homan said. "We're going to do the same priority base as President Trump's promise. But as that aperture opens, there'll be more arrests nationwide."
In sanctuary cities, Homan said, ICE is locked out of jails. That means 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 offenses but who law enforcement find associating with criminal illegal immigrants and take into custody as well.
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"Sweeps don't occur anywhere," Homan told Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, inside the ICE Command Center in Chicago on Sunday night. The border czar and television doctor teamed up to showcase on McGraw's streaming service, Meritt TV, how ICE operations are targeting violent offenders. Another video shared Sunday night showed Dr. Phil questioning an illegal immigrant, a convicted sex offender from Thailand who federal agents took into custody in Chicago.
For the past decade, ICE has had a staffing level of about 5,500 officers nationwide dedicated to immigration enforcement, according to the Post.
Trump has directed Homeland Security Investigations, the DHS agency focused on counterterrorism, drug smuggling, human trafficking cases and child exploitation, to also assist with immigration enforcement operations.
Last week, Huffman also issued a directive giving Department of Justice law enforcement officials in the U.S. Marshals, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Federal Bureau of Prisons authority to investigate and apprehend 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. "Mobilizing 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 apprehend illegal aliens have not been given proper resources. This is a major step in fixing that problem."
