Connect with us

Politics

JUST IN: ICE Gives First Major Update On Mass Deportations

Published

on

It’s been 70 years since a sitting U.S. president has tried anything close to the mass deportations President Donald Trump has promised. In just one day, his order deputizing a slew of federal authorities to round up illegal immigrants has taken hundreds of violent offenders off the streets of the country.

An update from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) revealed that a sweeping strategy targeting sanctuary cities appears to be working. Earlier this week, President Trump augmented the immigration bureau’s forces by granting officials within other agencies, including Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the FBI, and U.S. Marshalls the power to apprehend and arrest suspected illegal immigrants.

Together, both reforms have helped bring more than 500 violent offenders into custody, ICE reported on Thursday. A new “enforcement update” post on X by the agency revealed that on January 23rd, 538 individuals were arrested, while another 373 detainers were lodged for suspects under arrest with local jurisdictions.

By Friday morning, the social media post had garnered more than 7.7 million views and 21,000 reposts.

Shortly before the final numbers were released, White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News that the Trump administration would continue to do everything it could to clean up the mess left behind by the Biden-Harris administration.

“Joe Biden opened these borders on purpose. It wasn’t a mismanagement, it wasn’t incompetence. He knew exactly what he was doing. He made the promises while he was running for president,” Homan said Thursday. “President Trump’s going to secure the border at the highest level ever.”

“You thought we had a secure border before? Watch what happens now. It’ll be the tightest border in the history of this nation.”

In a separate update, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that “deportation flights have begun.”

“President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences,” she wrote on X.

An image released by Leavitt showed illegal immigrants being walked onto a military aircraft located at Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Sources told Fox News that the plane held approximately 80 individuals and departed for Guatemala around 5 p.m. local time.

In a separate executive order, President Trump dispatched 1,500 members of the U.S. military to the southern border, where they began installing razor wire along the fence at Ysleta Port of Entry in El Paso. Customs and Border officials told the outlet.

On Wednesday, Fox reporters embedded with ICE officials in Boston witnessed as raids led to the apprehension of convicted murderers and gang members. Child rapists are among the 538 individuals arrested on Thursday, ICE confirmed to Fox.

The last U.S. president to attempt such an expansive deportation effort was Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 under “Operation Wetback,” a campaign that used military-style techniques to ultimately remove up to 1.3 million undocumented Mexicans from the United States. Between 1942 and 1964, the Bracero Program allowed for the importation of an estimated 4.6 million Mexican workers to work in places like California and Texas. The federal government largely turned a blind eye to the problem until 1953, when an explosion of farms willing to accept illegal labor became too much to ignore.