White House aide Stephen Miller confirmed the Trump administration is pushing immigration officers to triple their arrests in coming weeks.
“We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day so we can get all of the Biden the illegals that were flooded into our country for four years out of our country,” Miller said during a Wednesday interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
The push signals a more aggressive stance as the administration tries to deliver on the largest mass deportation operation in history.
While Miller cast many who entered under Biden as illegal immigrants, many did so under new programs created by the prior administration to give some migrants legal status.
Miller’s comments came after Axios reported that he and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pushed the new figure.
Immigration officers have been arresting fewer than 1,000 migrants per month, but the push would likely require expanding efforts far beyond border communities.
It would also require significantly greater resources — something Trump is hoping to fund through the reconciliation package still be considered by Congress.
Even if the Trump administration meets its arrest goal, however, those figures lag deportations, which last month hit roughly 17,200 people, according to NBC News.
That would put the Trump administration at less than half the arrests needed to meet the all-time yearly record of 430,000 deportations set under the Obama administration.
Â
