During the 2024 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump pledged to execute the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
An estimated 18 million non-citizens live within the borders of the United States, according to FAIR.
Estimates from the Pew Research Center and Cato Institute show an increase in the U.S. illegal immigrant population of between 4-6 million during the Biden administration.
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data showed agents with roughly 10-11 million “encounters” with illegal border crossers. An encounter does not necessarily mean the individual or individuals remained in the country.
Mullin, the former Oklahoma U.S. senator, was sworn in on March 24, replacing Kristi Noem.
That change came soon after the deaths of ICE protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who interfered with ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and the surrounding area in January.
Under Mullin, the department’s enforcement tactics have shifted away from large raids of public places, instead focusing more on targeted arrests during check-ins or at traffic stops or similar engagements.
ICE officials have been told the White House wants to see an increase in arrests with the new productivity standard set at 2,000 arrests per day, The New York Times reported.
During a recent five-day period, ICE arrests reached more than 10,000 people.
Ben Cline, a U.S. House Republican from Virginia, applauded Mullin’s efforts in a Monday appearance on “Washington Watch.”
“The secretary is providing steady leadership for that department, making sure that we secure the border, as has been done over the past year and a half of the second Trump administration, making sure zero individuals who have entered this country (illegally) are allowed to stay in the country. They're all removed from the country when they're detected at the border. But the criminal element that is here illegally are removed from the country,” Cline told show host Jody Hice.
Current media coverage of ICE arrests doesn’t seem to show the same physical confrontation with officers that led to the deaths of Good and Pretti.
But ICE critics remain large in number. The most recent with a public platform to take aim at ICE — not for the first time — is New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“As we mark 250 years. What do we see? We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans,” Mamdani said last week.
Mullin, in an appearance on Fox News in June, called Mamdani a “socialist communist” for whom he has “zero respect.”
Trump, meanwhile, has been under political pressure to help business interests that rely on illegal labor in farm work, construction projects, and the hospitality industry.
“We can’t let our farmers not have anybody,” Trump told CNBC last year.
Fulfilling a campaign promise
Deportation efforts began with Trump’s second-term inauguration. For most of that time, 70% of deportees had criminal convictions or pending charges. That figure had fallen to 52% earlier this year, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering, research and distribution group founded by Syracuse University in 1989.
The White House says that almost 70% of ICE arrests involve illegal immigrants previously charged or convicted of a crime.
“Seventy percent of those who are deported have criminal records. So (Mullin) is doing the job that he was hired to do, that he was appointed by President Trump to do, and I commend him for doing it in a steady, nonsensical way,” Cline said.
TRAC data shows the total number of detainees during the second Trump term peaked at 70,766 at the end of January, a fraction of the millions that entered the country under Biden.
Data shows Texas with the largest number of detainees in 2026, followed by Louisiana, California, Florida and Georgia.
The administration has made it a top priority to remove illegals and secure the border, actions that make U.S. communities safer, Cline said.
“We need to continue on this path,” he said.
