In May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told immigration enforcement agents to aim for 3,000 arrests per day, which, as Axios noted, was triple the amount of arrests agents had been making at the beginning of President Trump’s second term. But despite the pushback to that figure, even if it were met, it’s not nearly enough to remove just those who came illegally under the Biden administration.
Speaking to reporters, Homan gave the actual number of illegal immigrants the administration would need to arrest just to undo what Biden did through his open-door policies.
“It’s at least 20 million in this country,” he said. “Look, we’ve been talking about 12 million for the last two decades. We know 10.5 million came through the border just under Joe Biden. And for those who say 3,000 a day is ridiculous, do the math. We’d have to arrest 7,000 every single day of this administration till the end, just to remove those that Biden released into the country.”
Tom Homan: "There's AT LEAST 20 million illegal aliens in this country. Look, we've been talking about 12 million for the last two decades. 10.5 million came to the border just under Joe Biden. We'd have to arrest 7,000 every single day just to remove those Biden let in." pic.twitter.com/tMgJKYTF4H
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 10, 2025
In order to ramp up arrests, Homan has vowed ICE agents will “double down, triple down on sanctuary cities.”
“Why? Not because [they’re a] blue city or blue state, because we know that’s where the problem is,” he said. “They’re releasing public safety threats and national security threats to the streets every day because they don’t honor our [requests they be] detained.”
