In the three weeks since President Donald Trump took office, Americans have witnessed a frenzy of arrests and deportations.
But the president is beginning to run into the hard reality of limited resources, raising questions about whether this administration can keep up the pace.
The speed of deportations is proving too slow for Trump. He has turned up the pressure on the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his advisers to deport more people, sources told NBC News.
Although at the start of the week Trump had expressed confidence in his immigration enforcement operation, by late Tuesday the top two officials in ICE’s enforcement division had been demoted, officials confirmed to NBC News. The demotions were first reported by The Washington Post.
How many people have been arrested and detained?
ICE did not respond to questions about the latest immigration enforcement numbers. There also was no response to a request for comment on the pace of arrests and the cost of the operations.
DHS posted on X that, as of Feb. 3, its agents had arrested 8,768 people.
In January, ICE acting Director Caleb Vitello told ICE agents to aim for 1,200 to 1,400 arrests a day.
On Jan. 27, ICE arrested 1,179 people, according to data obtained by NBC News. But the number dropped to 300 the first weekend in February, a source told NBC News.
Arrests have been taking place in several major cities, including New York, Chicago and Denver, using personnel from other agencies to help make them.
Trump may further expand manpower by deputizing IRS agents to investigate employers of people working illegally in the country. Already aiding the deportation operation are personnel from the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; and the U.S. Marshals Service.
But ICE officials have told lawmakers they may not have all they need to carry out Trump’s ambitious operation. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said that Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and budget director Russell Vought pleaded with Senate lawmakers in a meeting this week for more money.
“While there is this mass deportation effort in name, there is no resource change to the agencies that are involved,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “ICE is operating under the same budget that it had on Jan. 19.” Trump’s inauguration was Jan. 20.
How many people have been deported?
There were 5,693 deportations as of Feb. 3, according to the DHS post on X. It’s unclear if this figure includes all people flown back to their home countries or if it includes those who were sent back to Mexico across the border.
ICE’s average cost during the Biden administration for deporting a single person was about $10,500, including arrest, detention and the deportation flight, sources have told NBC News.
The administration had enough beds to hold 41,500 detainees at any given time at 106 facilities nationally, at a cost of $57,378 annually per bed. NBC News has previously reported that the Trump administration wants to open new detention centers and is preparing to restart detaining families.
Meanwhile, the administration is removing protections from deportation for some people, enlarging the pool of people who could be arrested and would need to be detained. Some 350,000 Venezuelans are due to lose Temporary Protected Status in April.
Trump has said he wants to use Guantánamo Bay for about 30,000 migrants. Last Tuesday, the administration sent its first flight of detainees to the U.S. naval base where foreigners apprehended after the Sept. 11 attacks have been held. A small migrant center at the base also held people interdicted at sea. On Thursday, a senior DHS official told NBC News there were 112 immigrants detained at Guantánamo Bay.
Hit with space limits and court orders limiting detention time, the administration has been releasing some people they’ve arrested. They continue tracking them with detention alternatives, such as ankle monitors, and by requiring them to check in with immigration officials.
On Feb. 6, the White House confirmed 461 people were released.
Two New York attorneys told NBC News that some immigrant clients already in such supervision programs have been told by ICE to report in sooner than scheduled and are being detained and deported when they do.
The administration has also opened up some previously closed deportation avenues.
Those deported have included people from Venezuela, which had not been accepting its citizens back for years. Trump sent an envoy to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who agreed to take back citizens deported from the U.S. Two Venezuelan planes returned with about 190 people on Monday.
Following visits from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Guatemala and El Salvador agreed to accept more deportees, from their countries and others. The administration has also deported nearly 120 Asian migrants of several nationalities to Panama as part of an agreement with the country’s president.
Tom Cartwright, a former finance executive who has voluntarily tracked deportation flights since 2000, said the military flights, ICE Air flights and flights from other countries have made tracking deportations more complex. ICE does not provide tracking information. Cartwright uses publicly available information, a network of observers and sources to track the flights and people deported.
So far, the deportation flights are not exceeding normal numbers, said Cartwright, who does the tracking for Witness at the Border, an immigrant advocacy group.
According to his report, in the eight days from Jan. 24 to Jan. 31 — days after Trump became president — the Air Force carried out eight deportation flights on C-17 cargo planes. An additional two that were to fly deportees to Colombia were not allowed to land.
In all, there were 109 deportation flights in January, with 65 before the inauguration and 44 after, including the eight military flights, according to Cartwright’s tracking.
Cartwright said to compare flights over time, he tallies the numbers of flights that take place on nonholiday weekdays. In January, before the inauguration, the number of flights per nonholiday weekday was five, and after inauguration it was 4.9. From the start of February to Feb. 8, the number was up to about six per nonholiday weekday, but still “within a very normal range,” he said.
“The long and short of it is, the military planes are not augmenting deportations to a level that is outside of the pattern. They are simply being used, in my view, (for) pure theatrics in the worst sense of the word,” Cartwright said.
Trump promised in January to continue using military jets and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said their use sends a strong and clear message that “if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences.”
How much is this costing?
Republicans in Congress are working to speed billions to the administration to pay the costs associated with its mass deportation operation. The president has said he wants to deport “millions and millions” of people; deporting 1 million immigrants in a year would require deportations of 2,700 immigrants each day.
In budget blueprints, Senate Republicans have proposed $175 billion for border security, while the House GOP is calling for $110 billion for immigration and border security. The numbers are starting points in what could be a weekslong process.
“We’re not building a wall folks, we’re hitting a wall,” Graham said Tuesday. “They need the money, and they need it now.”
Trump told NBC News before he took office that cost was no object in enacting his mass deportation plan.
“It’s not a question of a price tag,” he said in an interview in November. “It’s not — really, we have no choice.”
An accounting how much the arrests and deportations could cost taxpayers are yet to come. The administration has been considering moving money from other agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration, to plug a $230 million shortfall ICE already faced at the start of the administration, NBC News reported.
In a 2023 budget hearing testimony, the acting ICE Director said deportation flights cost $17,000 per flight hour for 135 people deported and last about five hours, Reuters reported.
Previous administrations have set priorities on whom to arrest, detain and deport, in part, because of limited resources.
ICE’s budget for the 2024 fiscal year is about $9.4 billion, said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who serves on the House Appropriations Committee.
How the bills on mass deportation will be paid “depends on how the majority (in Congress) wants to do this,” said Cuellar, who often votes for increased funding for border security and immigration enforcement.
“It’s either you cut somewhere else or you raise revenues,” he said, “and I think the majority will be looking at cutting somewhere else, unless they want to add to the deficit.”
