The Trump administration is preparing to bring in 3,000 additional immigration enforcement agents as it seeks to accelerate deportations, White House border czar Tom Homan has said in an interview with Fox News, defending the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown amid mounting legal challenges and delays in immigration courts.
Homan said ICE had repeatedly broken its records for arrests during the summer, with September recording the agency’s highest monthly number of removals, according to his remarks. He said additional personnel would help expand enforcement operations, while arguing that deportation s involve legal procedures that prevent authorities from removing everyone immediately after an arrest. “I think President Trump is keeping his promise because we’re arresting more people now than ever before,” Homan said.
Homan argued that the administration ‘s deportation campaign faces obstacles beyond the availability of enforcement personnel. He pointed to immigration court backlogs, nationwide injunctions and lawsuits challenging government policies.
He said ICE personnel were continuing to make arrest s despite these constraints and defended the administration’s broader approach to immigration enforcement.
He also claimed that more than 100 nationwide injunctions and class-action lawsuits were preventing the administration from carrying out some deportations. Homan further said authorities were dealing with approximately 85,000 habeas cases. These were figures cited by Homan and were not independently verified in his remarks. Habeas corpus petitions allow detained people to challenge the legality of their detention in court.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘Let’s go arrest them and deport them,’” he said, explaining that many people arrested by immigration authorities have a right to an immigration hearing.
