The White House has told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest 3,000 people per day, triple the daily pace from the early weeks of President Donald Trump's second term.

The directive came during a tense May 21 meeting at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C., according to four sources familiar with the session. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem led the meeting, Axios reported.

Who set the target and why?

Miller, the administration's leading architect of immigration policy, laid into senior immigration officials and demanded that field office directors and special agents in charge lift arrest and deportation numbers sharply. Two sources said staff left the meeting fearing for their jobs if they missed the new benchmark. A third source described Miller's tone as motivational rather than punitive.

Noem took a softer approach, asking ICE leaders for feedback. Special government employee Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign aide, also spoke at the meeting.

How does this compare to recent ICE activity?

• Daily arrests have roughly tripled since the early days of the Trump administration.
• ICE held almost 49,000 people in custody in early May, well above funded levels.
• Border-area deportations have dropped because fewer migrants attempt to cross.
• Interior removals have risen, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) data.
• Total deportations remain roughly equal to President Joe Biden's final year in office.

Why is the pressure intensifying now?

Border-crossing numbers have collapsed in Trump's first four months in office. Officials now want the same volume of removals drawn from non-border communities across the country.

The shift coincides with controversial ICE tactics in cities such as Phoenix and Newark, where agents have detained legal residents and U.S. citizens. Critics say these operations have weighed on Trump's immigration polling numbers.

How much money is behind the push?

Capitol Hill Republicans are drafting an extra $147 billion for immigration enforcement over ten years. The funding sits inside the Trump-backed "big beautiful bill" that passed the House last week.

DHS and ICE have already begun posting federal contract notices for additional staffing and detention beds. ICE has signed agreements to expand capacity at existing facilities. A recent expansion at a New Jersey detention center sparked protests that ended in the arrest of Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), drawing sharp Democratic criticism.

What is the administration's stated goal?

Trump and Vice President Vance have set a target of one million deportations per year — the largest such operation in U.S. history.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement: "Keeping President Trump's promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously. We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so. The safety of the American people depends upon it."

What do critics warn?

Immigration advocates say a bigger budget and more agents will lead to more wrongful detentions of Americans and legal immigrants, and possibly wrongful removals. They point to recent ICE encounters with U.S. citizens as evidence of risk.

For now, the new 3,000-per-day target remains an internal instruction, not a published ICE operational directive. Officers should treat any change in arrest practice as official only when ICE or DHS publishes it on a federal docket.