The operation started on day one, Jan. 20, with arrests of illegal immigrants across the nation, and it has quickly ramped up since then. It topped 2,300 arrests in the first week, reaching approximately 5,500 in 10 days.

Trump and Vice President JD Vance have touted plans to start out arresting and deporting the 500,000 to 1 million illegal immigrants with criminal records.

In addition to criminals, the Trump-Vance administration wants to remove the people who have already been ordered by a federal immigration judge to be removed.

At last count, roughly 1.4 million people have been ordered deported and are still in the U.S., according to a November report by Fox News.

“The numbers that they’re putting up are historic, but it’s also a lot less than the target number would be if this is the largest-ever or the most significant ever,” said a senior administration official with firsthand knowledge of the operation, who asked to speak on the condition of anonymity. “If they want to get to a meaningful number by the end of the calendar year, they have to scale up more.”

The same official said the arrest figures as of late have been “historic” and trending at two to three times the average number of arrests seen during the Biden administration and first Trump administration.

“If I’m Caleb Vitello or Tom Homan or other people that are in the know, you’re thinking, ‘The numbers are great. I love that we’re back in business, but they’re not good enough to meet what the expectations were,’” said the administration official, who asked to speak anonymously.

ICE arrests under Biden between fiscal years 2021 and 2024 ranged from an average of 200 to 470 per day, depending on the year. A total of 500,000 arrests occurred in that period.

During Trump’s first term in office from 2017 to 2020, daily arrests ranged from 280 to 440 for a total 548,000 arrests in four years.

But it was during the Obama administration that arrests were highest, according to the oldest available data obtained by the Washington Examiner. 

During former President Barack Obama’s eight years in office, ICE arrested an average of 882 illegal immigrants per day in 2011, the highest of his eight years in office. That year, more than 311,000 immigrants were arrested.

In Obama’s second term, which ran from 2013 to 2016, more than 641,000 arrests occurred.

In all, more than 1.2 million people were arrested from 2009 to 2012.

At Trump’s present rate, he would finish the calendar year with 200,000 arrests. If he sustained that pace over four years, he would still fall short of coming anywhere close to Obama’s 1.2 million arrests over four years.

ICE is making arrests by getting people directly from local jails, where it has requested certain inmates be turned over, as well as going after specific individuals within communities.

The challenge is that ICE is limited in some “sanctuary” jurisdictions from getting illegal immigrants in jail custody handed over to them.

The Biden administration stopped worksite enforcement operations, or going into job sites that had failed to respond to audits of workers.

If Trump restarted those operations, ICE could make hundreds more arrests per day, but it could come at a political price, angering some in the public who see hard-working immigrants as the victims.