U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is bursting at the seams, cramming 47,600 detainees into facilities funded for just 41,500, a senior ICE official revealed Wednesday. With arrests soaring under President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration push, the agency’s scrambling for extra beds—tapping the Department of Defense, U.S. Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons, while begging lawmakers for more cash to build out its lockups.
Since Trump’s January 20 inauguration, ICE has nabbed 32,800 people through March 10, averaging over 500 busts a day. A hefty 27% of those locked up—about 8,856—are immigration violators with no criminal rap sheet, a stat that’s raising eyebrows. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, insists they need 100,000 beds to pull off the mass deportation vision pitched in December 2024, a far cry from today’s stretched setup.
The prez blames a migrant flood under Joe Biden, who saw 113,400 ICE arrests across all of fiscal 2024—though Biden’s team deported more monthly (around 57,000) than Trump’s managed so far, per February Reuters data. Back then, border crossers got quick boots to Mexico; now, Trump’s focus on interior sweeps has clogged the system. “We’re maxed out,” the unnamed ICE official admitted, hinting at a logistical nightmare ahead if the deportation train keeps rolling.