The deportation machine is about to get bigger. Border Czar Tom Homan announced that 3,000 new ICE agents are coming on board, and he is not hiding the goal: push deportation numbers higher than ever.
Homan made the announcement in an interview with Fox News, defending the administration’s immigration crackdown against a wave of legal challenges and growing delays in the courts.
The 3,000 new agents are the final wave of a 10,000-agent hiring push. Homan has said about 7,000 of those agents are already on the job, with the remaining group going through training.
That hiring surge, he says, is meant to turn up the pressure. Earlier this year Homan declared that the country had a record, historic year for deportations, then added a warning that the best was yet to come, telling reporters to wait until next year.
The administration’s own numbers back up the claim of momentum. A DHS spokesperson said that as of late June, the department had deported more than 948,000 illegal aliens and arrested more than 981,000.
DHS also says more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the country since President Trump returned to office, including an estimated 2.2 million who left on their own. That figure is the administration’s, and it has not been independently confirmed.
Homan says ICE agents are “working their butts off,” and he credits them with breaking historic records. He also says the arrests are still climbing despite a steep drop in illegal border crossings.
But he is the first to admit that more agents alone will not solve the problem. The biggest obstacle, in his telling, is the courts.
According to Homan, the administration faces more than 100 nationwide injunctions and class-action lawsuits that block certain deportations. He also pointed to roughly 85,000 habeas corpus cases challenging detention.
He says immigrants have filed more habeas cases in the first 13 months of this term than in the last three administrations combined. His complaint is that agents are being ordered to release people and then find them all over again.
That frustration is the heart of the administration’s argument. Border security hawks say the system is clogged by activist judges and endless litigation, and that no amount of enforcement can keep up with a backlog like that.
Homan has also been blunt about the scale of the job. Asked how many more deportations are needed to restore order, his answer was a single word: millions. He has said he sees estimates of 12 million illegal aliens in the country.
Where will the new agents go? Homan has explained that the bulk of the new hires are meant for sanctuary jurisdictions. States like Florida and Texas already have sheriffs and police chiefs who cooperate with ICE and honor federal detainers.
Places that refuse to cooperate, such as New York, are another story. Homan has warned Gov. Kathy Hochul that ICE would flood the zone and that he was not asking for permission.
