Early ICE arrests are below 5% of Trump’s target: Here’s why

President Donald Trump put the figure of illegal aliens in the U.S. under President Joe Biden at 21 million during his Tuesday address to Congress, but the latest arrest figures show his administration on pace to apprehend less than 5% of that amount by the end of his term.

“Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States,” Trump said. “Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world because of Joe Biden's insane and very dangerous open border policies, they are now strongly embedded in our country.”

The latest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) figures pointed to 20,000 arrests in Trump’s first month. Calculated as 20,000 in 30 days, the daily rate came to 667 arrests, which projected over four years would lead to slightly fewer than one million arrests by the end of Trump’s term, or 4.8% of the 21 million.

Put simply, ICE arrests are significantly behind schedule and would need to total roughly 440,000 per month to see Trump’s target met. Border Czar Tom Homan has  expressed optimism that federal law enforcement can meet that target. So, why then the sluggish pace? The short answer is money.

Biden-era budgets and policies

After a string of continuing resolutions from Congress to avoid government shutdowns, ICE and other immigration-related agencies are operating at Biden-era funding levels. That administration prioritized processing illegal entrants to the United States rather than removing them and former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did not make arrests at a comparable rate to current figures.

Border funding is on the table, of course, but pending the resolution of House and Senate budget battles, there exists little in the way of resources to expand operations. Capacity issues prompted efforts to expand detention at Guantanamo Bay, though an early effort to use tents to expand the facility was abandoned over standards concerns. On Wednesday, reports emerged that the administration had halted deportation flights using military aircraft due to cost concerns.

At present, the House and Senate remain divided on a one-step vs. two-step funding plan, with Trump himself favoring the former. The upper chamber has sought to advance border funding in the first phase while addressing Trump’s tax promises in a second. But no surge in additional funding to address the border crisis is expected until the resolution of that standoff.

Decline in new entrants

Homan initially outlined plans to prioritize illegal alien violent criminals, namely those tied to gangs such as Tren de Aragua, repeat deportees, and those convicted of crimes. Recent ICE social media posts have pointed to MS-13 gang member arrests and efforts to handle trafficking operations. On February 20, the U.S. Department of State announced that Executive Order 14157 designates drug cartels and international gangs as "as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs)."

“We are prioritizing public safety threats, child predators, rapists, murderers. These are the worst of the worst walking around your communities,” Homan told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in late February. “And you would think any elected mayor, any elected governor, any elected city councilwoman would want public safety threats removed from their communities.”

ICE stopped posting regular updates on daily arrests weeks ago, leading to speculation that arrests had ground to a halt. The recently unveiled 20,000 figure appeared to confirm that the pace was not on target. Arrests and deportation figures are not the same.

Potentially simplifying things for ICE, however, is the precipitous decline in new entrants to the U.S., with U.S. Customs and Border Protection reporting only 61,465 encounters at the southwest land border in January. The agency has yet to report on February's numbers, which are expected to be much lower, but the January figures still represent a significant decline from the December 2023 high of 301,981.

ICE enforcement statistics are not currently up to date and are published on a quarterly basis. An ICE spokesperson told Just the News that “since Jan. 20, ICE has significantly increased its immigration enforcement activities with additional support from other federal law enforcement and DOD partners. In an effort to keep the American people informed about the results of our efforts with only the most accurate information, ICE is compiling and validating the data and is working toward publishing our enforcement statistics on a monthly basis.”

New sheriff in town

Potentially presenting a silver lining to the administration’s relatively slow arrest rate are the number of voluntary outflows of illegal aliens from the country. Prior to the administration’s formal return, NewsNation reported on a surge of illegals traveling from the United States to Mexico so as to avoid potential arrest.

“It started a couple weeks ago,” National Border Patrol Council Vice President Art Del Cueto said in January on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “They didn't wait till now. It started a couple weeks ago where they were saying, 'Hey, look, we know the new sheriff is in town. Let's pack up and leave Dodge.' I guess you would say.”

A few relatively high-profile persons have opted to leave in light of their uncertain legal status. Diego De la Vega, the former deputy communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, D-N.Y., opted to return to Colombia in December of 2024 before Trump took office, Migrant Insider reported.

Panama, an unavoidable crossing point for migrants traveling on foot from South America to the U.S., has witnessed a surge in people traveling the opposite direction in recent weeks. “Last week, they found about 140 people in their northern border with Costa Rica. The next day, he says there were about 400 people,” said CBS News correspondent Lilia Luciano last week, citing the Panamanian Minister of Foreign Affairs. “So this is essentially reverse migration, people heading south, back to their countries of origin.

A 400 person per day pace would amount to roughly 600,000 self-deportations by the end of Trump’s term. Notably, remigration figures may be higher given that Panama is situated South of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which represent the points of origin for millions of illegal immigrants.