WASHINGTON (AP) — The top official in charge of carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportations agenda has been reassigned amid concerns that the deportation effort isn't moving fast enough.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Friday that Caleb Vitello, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was “no longer in an administrative role, but is instead overseeing all field and enforcement operations: finding, arresting, and deporting illegal aliens, which is a major priority of the President and Secretary (Kristi) Noem.”
The statement made no mention of why Vitello, a career ICE official with more than two decades on the job, was reassigned or who his replacement will be. White House officials have expressed frustration with the pace of deportations of people in the country illegally.
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the decision to reassign Vitello came from the Homeland Security secretary and not from the president.
The decision comes a little over one month into the new administration, showing how important immigration and carrying out mass deportations are to the Trump administration.
ICE — specifically, its Enforcement and Removal Operations arm — is the key agency tasked with carrying out the Republican president’s pledge of mass deportations of people in the country illegally during his second term.
Last week Tom Homan, the White House border czar tasked with carrying out Trump’s immigration agenda across the federal government, said arrests inside the U.S. — as opposed to people arrested as they’re crossing the border — are about three times higher than they were this time last year, under President Joe Biden. But he said it still wasn’t enough.
“I’m not satisfied,” Homan said. “We got to get more.”
At the time, Homan also said he had talked to ICE leadership about the number of people who had been released from immigration custody. From now on, he said, no one would be released without ICE leadership signing off.
“The number of releases was unacceptable,” Homan said, “and that’s been fixed.”
Homan spoke the same day that two top immigration enforcement officials were reassigned.
The Trump administration has released limited information about how many people in the country illegally have been arrested.
From Jan. 23 to Jan. 31, officials shared data on X daily, then stopped publishing information. The agency’s data dashboard has more information, but those quarterly figures are only current as of September 2024.
During the seven-day day period when ICE released daily data, the daily average was 787 arrests, compared with 311 during a 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Carrying out deportations, especially in high numbers, poses logistical challenges.
There are a limited number of enforcement and removal officers — those tasked with tracking down, arresting and removing people in the country illegally — and the number of officers has remained stagnant for years. ICE also has a limited number of detention beds to hold people once arrested and a limited number of planes to remove them from the country.
The Trump administration has augmented ICE's fleet of charter planes with U.S. military planes and has pulled in officers from other agencies to help carry out immigration enforcement operations.
The administration has repeatedly said its first priority is migrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. or pose a threat, but those arrests often require intensive staffing and time.
“They’re asking ICE and law enforcement to defy math,” said Jason Houser, the former chief of staff at ICE under the Biden administration.
Vitello most recently was the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs before being tapped as the acting director.
He’s also served on the National Security Council and held positions at ICE directly related to the agency’s enforcement operations.
ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader in years.
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Associated Press reporter Will Weissert contributed to this report.
Rebecca Santana, The Associated Press
