Politico reports:
Stephen Miller was unequivocal: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would seek to arrest 3,000 or more immigrants per day, a staggering target that he said was necessary to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every day,” the senior White House adviser told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in May.
But on Friday, the Justice Department said no such orders had ever been given. While DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth attributed the quota claim to “anonymous reports in the newspapers,” he didn’t mention that Miller — Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser — had publicly confirmed the 3,000-daily-arrest “goal” in the televised interview on Fox. The discrepancy is the latest example of a gulf between what White House advisers say in public and what the Justice Department says in court.
Read the full article.
NEW: On Fox, Stephen Miller was unequivocal: the Trump administration wants a *minimum* of 3,000 immigration arrests per day to carry out Trump’s mass deportation policy.
On Friday night, DHS/ICE confirmed they’d never received such an order. https://t.co/T2QY8uHFiN pic.twitter.com/hV8JzkWipP
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 3, 2025
“All that matters is numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.”
“The Trump administration’s mandate to arrest 3,000 illegal migrants per day is forcing ICE agents to deprioritize going after dangerous criminals.” https://t.co/CuiDuAxciM pic.twitter.com/xRWLSsnlXb
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 17, 2025
🔊In May, Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller imposed a 3,000 daily ICE arrest quota. ‘After that we saw that ICE operations appear to become much more indiscriminate,’ @tedhesson says on this weekend’s On Assignment podcast. Listen now https://t.co/m5sfWxA3qy pic.twitter.com/9P8WCAjnDF
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 2, 2025
White House Deputy Chief of Staff @StephenM confirmed the Trump administration is "looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day," and saying the number is going to keep getting bumped higher over time. pic.twitter.com/kWhWOtei9F
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 29, 2025