The Trump administration is preparing to bring in 3,000 additional immigration enforcement agents as it seeks to accelerate deportations, White House border czar Tom Homan has said in an interview with Fox News, defending the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown amid mounting legal challenges and delays in immigration courts.
Homan said ICE had repeatedly broken its records for arrests during the summer, with September recording the agency's highest monthly number of removals, according to his remarks. He said additional personnel would help expand enforcement operations, while arguing that deportations involve legal procedures that prevent authorities from removing everyone immediately after an arrest.
“I think President Trump is keeping his promise because we're arresting more people now than ever before,” Homan said.
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Homan cites court backlogs, legal challenges
Homan argued that the administration's deportation campaign faces obstacles beyond the availability of enforcement personnel. He pointed to immigration court backlogs, nationwide injunctions and lawsuits challenging government policies.
“It's not as simple as, 'Let's go arrest them and deport them,'” he said, explaining that many people arrested by immigration authorities have a right to an immigration hearing.
{{/usCountry}}“It's not as simple as, 'Let's go arrest them and deport them,'” he said, explaining that many people arrested by immigration authorities have a right to an immigration hearing.
{{/usCountry}}He also claimed that more than 100 nationwide injunctions and class-action lawsuits were preventing the administration from carrying out some deportations. These were figures cited by Homan and were not independently verified in his remarks.
Homan further said authorities were dealing with approximately 85,000 habeas cases. Habeas corpus petitions allow detained people to challenge the legality of their detention in court.
Homan complained that court orders sometimes require authorities to release detainees, forcing officers to locate them again if they are subsequently pursued for removal.
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Trump administration presses ahead with deportations
Homan also criticized sanctuary jurisdictions, which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and blamed a government shutdown for disrupting enforcement operations.
He said ICE personnel were continuing to make arrests despite these constraints and defended the administration's broader approach to immigration enforcement.
The addition of 3,000 agents would strengthen the administration's enforcement capacity, although Homan's remarks did not provide a specific deployment schedule or a revised annual deportation target.
The expansion comes as the Trump administration continues to pursue its mass deportation agenda. The scale of future removals will depend not only on staffing and detention capacity but also on immigration court proceedings and the outcome of legal challenges to federal enforcement policies.