The Trump administration vowed on Sunday to continue expanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations targeting illegal immigrants.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said a surge in applicants interested in joining ICE will help the agency carry out larger-scale operations and drive higher arrest numbers. She credited President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which allocated roughly $75 billion in funding toward ICE, with spurring momentum for the mass deportation effort during an interview with Fox News.
“We want to really surge those arrest numbers, especially given that One Big Beautiful Bill that we’ve received the funding to do it,” McLaughlin said over the weekend.
“We’re going to be making great progress,” she continued, referencing the number of recruits ICE has embraced, which officials have touted as a record.
“We have 175,000 applications to ICE, so we can really surge our workforce and get more brave men and women on the ground to do this great work,” McLaughlin said, adding that the administration’s efforts had already resulted in approximately 500,000 deportations.
DHS launched a nationwide recruitment campaign after receiving funding to ramp up operations through the bill in July. It has spent $6.5 million on recruitment advertising, running campaigns on television and podcasts, according to the Associated Press.
ICE has received 175,000 applications, extended over 18,000 job offers, and hopes to onboard 10,000 deportation officers by January, according to DHS.
To attract recruits, ICE is offering several incentives to new hires, including student loan forgiveness programs and a bonus of up to $50,000. The agency has also relaxed its previous age restrictions, widening the applicant pool.
“This is the first time ICE has ever had a major plus-up. So the beauty of that is that we can learn from the best practices of other agencies,” ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan told Politico earlier this year. “That huge presence that we’re seeing from former military and former federal law enforcement — those are people that have been vetted their entire career and have done great work for this country their entire career. And so having them a part of our ranks is really going to be helpful when it comes to a lot of the criticism that we’re getting right now.”
The White House is pushing to arrest and deport at least 1 million illegal immigrants by the end of Trump’s first year in office. Immigration hard-liners close to Trump, particularly White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, have pushed to expand that quota.
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“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 single day, so we can get all of the Biden illegals that were flooded into our country for four years out of our country,” Miller said in May.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act was a core part of the administration’s effort to carry out the deportation agenda. The law includes $30 billion for arrest and deportation efforts and $45 billion to expand detention capabilities to nearly 100,000 beds. The law also allocated $8 billion to hire 10,000 new deportation officers and is expected to support the addition of 10,000 new ICE agents over the next five years.
In the wake of rising concerns about poor conditions at crowded detention facilities, DHS has begun a process to hire more medical professionals.
“ICE is actively recruiting healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, pharmacists, and health administrators, to support the expanded detention capacity enabled by the historic funding provided under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” McLaughlin told NPR in a statement last week.
