ICE to Increase Quotas of Undocumented Migrants Arrests From Few Hundreds to Thousands: Report

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have reportedly been directed to increase their daily quotas of arrests from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500 amid disappointments from the Trump administration on the agency's performance, a new Washington Post report shows.

ICE officials were told over the weekend that each of the agency's field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets, four people with knowledge of the briefings told the Post. The four people spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal briefings.

The quotas, communicated to officials Saturday, would put more pressure to round up more migrants across the country, including those who have not committed crimes, the sources said.

Neither ICE nor Border Czar Tom Homan immediately responded to the allegations. But shortly after the Washington Post reported on the matter, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an email that, "your story is false," though she provided no specifics to her arguments.

However, Homan said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the administration is "in the beginning stages" of its mass deportation plan, and while public safety threats and national security threats are a priority, "as that aperture opens, there'll be more arrests nationwide."

News of the quotas comes as immigration enforcement officials ensued raids across multiple cities Sunday. ICE said it made 956 arrests Sunday through their deportation operations— the largest single-day number to date by the Trump administration. Since Trump's inauguration last week, ICE has made at least 2,681 arrests, but it remains unclear how many of those arrested had criminal histories or convictions.

Homan said that among those apprehended over the weekend were migrants convicted of serious offenses, including murder and sex crimes. He added that collateral arrests— detentions of people without criminal convictions who were present during the raids— would occur.

In Chicago, where Homan himself was present to enforce immigration crackdown over the weekend, among the apprehended were six migrants convicted of serious sex offenses, multiple gang members and two others who were previously convicted of murder and aggravated sexual battery, according to the Border Czar.

Asked about the quotas, Homan told NBC News the total goal is to "get as many criminals as possible."

"I don't have a quota," he said. "My instructions to them: Arrest as many as you can."

In other cities across the country, the Drug Enforcement Administration said on social media that the agency helped conduct operations that arrested or detained people in the country that are undocumented. The DEA's Rocky Mountain Division said that it, along with its federal and local partners, conducted an operation at a "makeshift nightclub" early Saturday in Adams County, Colorado, where nearly 50 people in the country without authorization were taken into custody.

The reported quotas and the raids are the latest in the mass deportation saga as the Trump administration scrambles to keep up with their promise to carry out the largest operations in American history. Last week, the border czar defended the administration's plans to send ICE into schools and other sensitive locations.

"How many MS-13 members are the ages 14 to 17? Many of them," Homan said during an interview with ABC's "This Week."

"So look, if it's a national security threat, public safety threat and what, what you need to understand is that it's case by case, name another agency, another law enforcement agency, that has those types of requirements, that they can't walk into a school or doctor's office or a medical campus. No other agency is held to those standards. These are well-trained officers with a lot of discretion, and when it comes to a sensitive location, there's still gonna be supervisory review," he continued.