The leadership of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) verbally instructed its agents nationwide on Tuesday to increase daily immigrant detentions by 1,000, thereby reinstating the previous goal of 3,000 arrests per day.
Two sources familiar with the directive, quoted by CNN, indicated that the order also sets a weekly target of 19,000 arrests, a figure that accounts for lower activity on weekends and the reduced availability of agents on the ground.
Before this instruction, ICE averaged around 2,000 daily detentions, a rate that officials wanted to maintain but that the new directive seeks to increase by an additional 50%.
La escalada en los operativos de ICE forma parte de una política migratoria en constante cambio. Sigue todas las novedades sobre arrestos, deportaciones y sus implicaciones en nuestra sección de
This is not the first time the agency has attempted to reach that target. The goal of 3,000 daily arrests had previously been set by the White House, but ICE was unable to maintain it consistently.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied to CNN that there are formal quotas. "Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE has been empowered to find, arrest, and deport illegal aliens from the United States using all legal tools available," a spokesperson for the agency stated.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, also denied any imposition of quotas: "I have never spoken to anyone at the White House about any quotas. We do our job every day, and we do it effectively," he stated last month on the program Inside Politics.
In August, ICE recorded more than 50,000 arrests, its highest monthly total during Trump's second term, surpassing the record set in July. Between January and August, the agency accumulated 262,768 detentions in total.
However, the actual deportations have not increased at the same pace. Despite the record detentions, expulsions have remained around 1,200 people daily, nearly the same level as in May, which has created increasing pressure on the capacity of the facilities.
To address that bottleneck, the DHS issued a contract request to build temporary detention facilities, arguing that "urgent temporary infrastructure is needed to expand safe processing and retention capacity."
Additionally, ICE plans to hire another 5,000 agents before the end of the year.
The new directive also comes amid fractures within the Republican Party. Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, who represents a district with a high concentration of Hispanics in Florida, launched an election ad in September warning that Trump's immigration policy "has gone too far" and that Hispanics who supported the president "feel betrayed."
The agricultural industry, with a Republican inclination, also warned about the impact of the raids on its operations, which were temporarily disrupted by ICE activity.
The midterm legislative elections are scheduled for November 3, 2026. Immigration remains one of the central pillars of the Trump administration's agenda.
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