Nearly two million immigrants in the United States illegally have left since President Donald Trump began his second term, and the numbers will “explode” in the upcoming year with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planning to triple its workforce, according to White House border czar Tom Homan.
Homan said in a television interview that ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have carried out more than 400,000 deportations, with another 1.6 million migrants leaving voluntarily because of the increased enforcement efforts, reports The Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
“We’re at over 400,000 deportations between CBP and ICE, and that’s just since the president took office,” Homan said. “The first four months of the fiscal year, we can’t count them because Joe Biden wasn’t doing anything. But here’s what people need to understand: over 1.5 million illegal aliens, close to 1.6 million illegal aliens, have already left the country on their own. Why? Because they see what ICE is doing out there every day.”
He added that the increased number of ICE agents will also affect the number of immigrants being apprehended.
“What’s to come? ICE is getting 10,000 more agents,” he said. “Right now, we have 5,000 deportation officers. We’re tripling the size of the workforce.”
Homan said he knew that once ICE started making arrests, many migrants would opt to leave on their own or decide not to try entering the United States.
“One of the reasons we have the most secure border in the history of this nation is because of the great work of the men and women of the border patrol, the great work of President Trump and his leadership, but also because ICE is out there, over a thousand teams, all across the country arresting people,” Homan said.
“A lot of people have left, a lot of people aren’t coming, which helps us secure that border. And that was part of the strategy from the beginning,” he added. “We said that if we show consequences, if we show we’re actually out there looking for them, many will leave. So, we knew a large population would leave, and over 1.5 million have.”
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