The Trump administration removed the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement one month into his tenure, as White House officials have become frustrated that the agency isn’t arresting immigrants fast enough to meet the president’s deportation goals. Caleb Vitello, a veteran ICE official who was appointed when President Trump took office, will be reassigned to a senior role overseeing enforcement operations. Trump has ordered ICE to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history and ramp up the number of immigrants it arrests each day. Despite the administration's sending thousands of troops to the southern border and assigning thousands of agents and officers from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, ICE’s budget and staffing remain largely unchanged, leaving officers scrambling to meet aggressive arrest quotas, reports the Washington Post.
In late January, Vitello told ICE’s 25 field offices to arrest at least 75 immigrants per day for a national daily total of 1,200 to 1,500. ICE officers have been working six and even seven days a week since then, but Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and “border czar” Tom Homan blamed agency officials for falling far short of those goals. Louisiana Secretary of Wildlife and Fisheries Madison Sheahan, a former Noem campaign aide, is expected to be acting deputy director of ICE. The agency averaged more than 800 daily arrests in the 10 days after Trump took office. The pace in the first two weeks of February slowed to fewer than 600 daily. Officials said the enforcement blitz depleted the lists of targets ICE developed before Trump took office. Many immigrants are refusing to open their doors when officers knock. Enforcement teams do not possess criminal arrest warrants that would allow them to force their way into their targets’ residences.