Donald Trump secretly ordered a surge in United States Immigration And Customs Enforcement arrests that pushed the count past 10,000 people in five days. The pace rose fast enough to lift daily detentions above 2,400 on Saturday and send the detained population inside ICE facilities to more than 63,000 by Tuesday.
Officials were told 2,000 detentions a day was the new benchmark, roughly double the 1,000 picked up each day earlier this year. That shift came after the White House pushed for more arrests, according to three officials with knowledge of the conversations.
ICE pushes arrests beyond 2,000
Agency leaders ordered top ICE officials to throw more officers into rounding up immigrants marked for deportation. Agents seized people at routine immigration check-ins, during traffic stops, and out on the street, turning a broader enforcement drive into a rapid daily count that peaked at more than 2,400 people in a single day.
The detained population inside ICE facilities jumped by nearly 4,000 to more than 63,000 as of Tuesday. That surge put immediate pressure on detention space while the arrest drive kept moving at a rate far above the earlier-year baseline.
Markwayne Mullin and the quieter push
Markwayne Mullin said, “We are going to take a different approach that can be more effective and less public-facing” after replacing Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary. The week did not match that description: the arrest tally climbed sharply, and the detentions remained visible in routine settings across U.S. communities.
That friction matters because the new benchmark was not met by a slow, selective effort. It was reached through mass arrests at check-ins, traffic stops, and street encounters, which made the enforcement push harder to miss even as it was described as less public-facing.
Sister Letty Ugboaja in South Texas
Sister Letty Ugboaja, a Nigerian nun and local nurse, was arrested on her way to church on Sunday morning in South Texas and released the same day after congressional officials intervened. Sister Norma Pimentel said, “It took her a while to be able to talk—she was crying.”
Her arrest gave the enforcement surge a face beyond the total. It also showed how quickly the new detention pace can reach people moving through ordinary routines, not only those appearing at scheduled immigration appointments.
The article does not identify what specific secret order or internal directive set the five-day surge in motion, but the operational target was plain: 2,000 detentions a day. The next pressure point is whether ICE keeps that pace or falls back toward the earlier 1,000-a-day level while the detained population stays above 63,000.
