President Donald Trump‘s “largest-ever” mass deportation has led to the detention of more than 32, 000 unlawful immigrants within the United States in his first 50 days in business, according to national country security officers.
The Department of Homeland Security and U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement touted the number in an attempt to protect the Trump administration’s rate of arresting and deporting illegal refugees, given the “millions and thousands” of removal he promised in his opening statement.
Of the 32, 000 detention since Jan. 20, 14, 111 were convicted criminals, 9, 980 had pending legal fees, and the remaining 8, 718 had another immigration breaches, which Lyons noted meant” they violated U. S. emigration law, which is also a murder”.
Lyons, aided by top DHS and ICE officers in the phone, maintained that the type of refugees being arrested is distinct than whom the Biden or Obama governments went before.
During the Biden-era border crisis, overcome Border Patrol agents caught and subsequently released illegal immigrants into the country without giving them court times. When those individuals after followed up with ICE when resettled in the U. S., ICE next counted each check-in as an arrest, which authorities on the phone said raised arrest numbers to look bigger than they were.
” We expect these ICE detention and treatment numbers will only go up as we unleash an organization that has had its arms tied behind its back in the past four times”, Lyons said.
Trump’s imprisonment promises and price of arrests
Trump and Vice President JD Vance have touted plans to start arresting and deporting up to 1 million illegal immigrants with legal documents.
On Jan. 20, Trump previewed he’d “begin the process of returning millions and millions of legal foreigners up to the sites from which they came”.
In addition to scammers, the Trump administration wants to remove the individuals who have already been ordered by a federal immigration judge to be removed.
At last count, roughly , 1.4 million  , citizens have been ordered deported and are still in the U. S., according to a November statement by Fox News.
Trump’s imprisonment activity topped 2, 300 detention in the first week, reaching nearly 5, 500 in 10 days. It hit 32, 000 arrests as of Monday.
ICE arrests under former President Joe Biden resulted in a total of 500, 000 arrests during his four years in office, roughly the same range as Trump’s first term.
In former President Barack Obama’s first term, more than 1.2 million people were arrested from 2009 to 2012, while roughly half that figure was arrested during his second term.
Did Biden deport more than Trump?
Deportation numbers were higher at the end of the Biden administration than at the start of the Trump administration, according to a comparison of figures.
However, the figures do not tell the entire story. The illegal immigrants the Biden administration was removing from the country were largely immigrants who had just illegally crossed the border as opposed to illegal immigrants living in the interior of the country.
In the final six months of the Biden administration, the DHS expanded the number of removal flights it was carrying out to remove more illegal immigrants at the border.
Under Trump, illegal border crossings have dropped to the lowest recorded levels since 1967. In February, fewer than 9, 000 non-U. S. citizens were arrested by Border Patrol along the southern border compared to roughly 60, 000 arrests per month in Biden’s final months in office.
With fewer illegal immigrants crossing the border, Trump has had far fewer to deport directly from the border, leaving him to focus on arresting and removing people inside the country.
Trump’s deportation promise and challenges
A lack of funding is what is delaying arrests from hitting higher levels, according to White House border czar Tom Homan, who spoke with the Atlantic and admitted he is personally” not happy” with the number of arrests.
The Trump administration pushed aside its acting director of ICE, Caleb Vitello, after weeks on the job due to concerns that arrests and deportations had not occurred fast enough, according to the report.
The government is still relying on 2024 funding levels for ICE to carry out a much bigger operation than was done in 2024, when Biden had 271, 000 immigrants, primarily at the border, removed from the U. S.
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” ]DHS] Secretary]Kristi] Noem has also called on Congress to act and get us the funding that the department needs to make sure we are targeting arresting and detaining these individuals who are in this country illegally”, one DHS official on the call stated.  ,
A stopgap funding bill to keep the government open through September passed the House this week and awaits a vote in the Senate. It would give ICE a funding boost to reach nearly$ 10 billion to assist with deportations.
