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President Trump’s promise to launch the largest deportation operation in U.S. history is colliding with the practical difficulties of detaining people and transporting them across the globe.
March 5, 2025Updated 11:37 a.m. ET
Just about every week since taking office, President Trump has called Thomas D. Homan, the enforcer of his immigration agenda, looking for an update on mass deportations.
How is it going at the border? What do the arrest numbers look like? Are sanctuary cities still standing in the way of the crackdown?
Mr. Homan’s typical response serves as something of a reality check for the president, whose campaign promise to deport millions of people is colliding with the practical difficulties of detaining immigrants and then transporting them across the globe.
“We need to increase the arrests,” Mr. Homan said he has told Mr. Trump, recounting their conversations in an interview with The New York Times. “They’re not high enough.”
Inside the administration, there is growing frustration about the pace of arrests and deportations, even as Mr. Trump mobilizes the full weight of the federal government behind his mission to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
Mr. Homan acknowledged he could not predict the number of people the administration would deport this year, citing financial shortfalls at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
