The Trump administration says more than a million undocumented immigrants have voluntarily left the United States since it tightened border controls.
US Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem announced on August 8 that since President Donald Trump took office and tightened immigration controls, more than one million people who entered the US illegally have voluntarily left and no cases of illegal border crossings into the US have occurred in the past three months.
Noem said thousands of people have “self-deported” through the CBP Home app , which DHS launched in March. The Trump administration has also arrested hundreds of thousands of “illegal immigrant criminals” during this time.
“This is the first time in our nation’s history that we’ve seen this level of security at the border,” Noem said at a press conference in Chicago. “Our top priority is securing the border and catching dangerous criminals, deporting murderers, rapists, drug dealers, human traffickers.”
US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visits a prison in El Salvador on March 26. Photo: Reuters
Mr. Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and has moved to significantly increase the staffing of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency spearheading this effort.
Noem said Trump has allocated resources to DHS to hire 10,000 more ICE officers. “We’ve been open for less than a week, and we’ve already had over 80,000 applicants,” she said. DHS has also removed the age limit for ICE positions.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has said that ICE should aim to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants per day.
The pressure to meet quotas has prompted ICE to launch large-scale immigration raids in many localities, especially Democratic-led cities, sparking a series of protests across the country.
According to a survey conducted by CNN and published on July 20, 55% of Americans surveyed said the Trump administration “has gone too far” in its efforts to deport illegal immigrants, an increase of 10 percentage points compared to February.
