DOJ Is Walking Back the White House’s Goal to Arrest 3,000 Immigrants per Day

Stephen Miller was unequivocal: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would seek to arrest 3,000 or more immigrants per day, a staggering target that he said was necessary to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

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But when federal judges pressed for details about that figure last week, the administration denied any such quota existed. The contradiction came in a lawsuit that alleged the intense pressure to rack up arrests had led ICE to conduct illegal sweeps in Los Angeles.

It’s not the only case that has featured the 3,000-arrest-per-day target as a crucial piece of evidence that the administration’s single-minded drive to rack up arrests may have prompted immigration authorities to cut corners or break the law. Washington-based Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, cited the figure when she ruled Friday that the administration’s dramatic expansion of “expedited” deportation proceedings violated the law. And Judge Trina Thompson, a Biden appointee in San Francisco, pointed to the purported goal Thursday when she blocked the administration’s bid to end temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Nicaraguan, Honduran and Nepali immigrants.

But on Wednesday, the Justice Department said no such orders had ever been given.

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While DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth attributed the quota claim to “anonymous reports in the newspapers,” he didn’t mention that Miller — Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser — had publicly confirmed the 3,000-daily-arrest “goal” in the televised interview on Fox.

The discrepancy is the latest example of a gulf between what White House advisers say in public and what the Justice Department says in court. In this instance, the chasm may be undermining the DOJ’s already strained credibility with judges.

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The existence of the target has created particular complications in the case challenging the immigration sweeps in Los Angeles. The administration is fighting an order that a federal judge issued last month prohibiting ICE from conducting “roving” immigration arrests based on broad criteria such as presence at a home improvement store or car wash.

The claim of a quota featured prominently in oral arguments at the 9th Circuit last week on the administration’s bid to overturn that order. And when the 9th Circuit ruled Friday night, leaving the order largely intact, the judges seemed to highlight the contradiction by quoting the entirety of DOJ’s denial and then taking note of Miller’s statement to Fox about a “goal.”

The three Democratic-appointed judges assigned to the case said the vague factors ICE appeared to be relying on “impermissibly cast suspicion on large segments of the law-abiding population, including anyone in the District who appears Hispanic, speaks Spanish or English with an accent, wears work clothes, and stands near a carwash, in front of a Home Depot, or at a bus stop.”

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