(Daily Signal)—Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are becoming burned out, according to multiple sources.
ICE agents are “maxed out,” a senior Trump administration official told The Daily Signal, and yet there is “frustration” within the administration that deportation numbers aren’t higher.
“I think it is just an enormous challenge to get 20 million people out of this country,” the official said, referring to an estimation of the number of illegal aliens living in the U.S.
The administration has deported over 600,000 illegal aliens since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, according to the Department of Homeland Security. An additional 1.9 million have self-deported, but the White House is not satisfied, according to sources familiar with the situation.
“ICE is under major pressure from the White House,” another senior Trump administration official told The Daily Signal, adding, “That’s public information. A bunch of people got transferred and fired … in ICE because they’re not hitting the numbers that they want them to hit.”
In October, The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration planned to reassign a dozen directors of ICE field offices and replace them with Customs and Border Protection or ICE officials.
ICE Under Pressure
While the pressure is mounting to make more arrests and conduct more deportations, a retired ICE officer with knowledge of the current administration says agents are being affected by the demands.
ICE agents are glad they can do their job, but the pace of the job is causing “a little bit of burnout” he said, adding that the increased pay for overtime work only goes so far when agents’ marriages are feeling the weight of the demanding work schedule, and they are not seeing their children.
The retired ICE officer said he believes the Trump administration does care about the well-being of the agents, and stressed that he supports the administration’s immigration agenda, but said ICE agents are “not robots.”
“And you know, when you make them tired and you keep them working, that’s when mistakes are made, and mistakes are dangerous when you carry guns,” the retired officer said.
The Department of Homeland Security is currently working to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 new ICE agents, which will help the workload, according to the retired ICE officer, but new agents won’t have the institutional knowledge and background of longtime agents. The concern is that seasoned agents may start leaving ICE if the pressure and demands don’t change.
DHS says some of the new hires are already in the field.
“Many of ICE’S new recruits are former law enforcement officers, military, or former ICE officers who retired or quit under President [Joe] Biden because they were frustrated about not being able to do their jobs,” a DHS spokesperson told The Daily Signal.
“The vast majority of new officers brought on during the hiring surge are experienced law enforcement officers who have already successfully completed a law enforcement academy. This population is expected to account for greater than 85% of new hires,” the DHS spokesperson added.
A Trump administration official says while he has not witnessed the burnout of ICE agents, “it’s like a question of when, because you can only be going at 100 miles an hour for so long before you it gets to you.”
White House Response
Asked about the concern of burnout, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Daily Signal that the “American people are deeply appreciative for the heroic work being done by ICE agents. They make American communities safer and protect American families, all in the face of unrelenting smears from Democrats.”
“The Trump administration will continue supporting our great ICE agents and ensuring they have the resources they need to be successful in and out of the workplace,” Jackson added.
Trump administration officials, including the president, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and border czar Tom Homan, speak highly of ICE agents and have repeatedly expressed their gratitude for the hard work of the men and women of ICE.
“The Trump administration is not tired of winning—and neither are our brave law enforcement officers,” a DHS spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “Thanks to the leadership of the secretary and president, the U.S. has seen more than 2.5 million illegal aliens leave the U.S.”
Reporting Deportation Numbers
The Trump administration is remaining highly focused on deportations headed into 2026 and deportation numbers are expected to grow higher. To this end, a senior Trump administration official says, the media should not be surprised when illegal aliens without a criminal record are also arrested and deported.
The Trump administration “said the ‘worst first,’ not only the worst of the worst,” the senior official noted, adding, “obviously, there’s some other category that’s going to be second and third.”
While ICE is occasionally releasing deportation numbers, it is not reporting regular deportation numbers in the same way that Customs and Border Protection reports border encounter numbers every month. One possible reason for the lack of reporting might be because there is dissatisfaction over the numbers not being higher, two senior Trump administration officials told The Daily Signal.
ICE also does not have a good system for tracking and reporting deportation numbers, according to one of the officials.
“Nobody’s on the same page about what statistics are important and also what they mean,” the senior official said, explaining that if ICE assists the Texas Department of Public Safety in making an immigration arrest, it is not clear if ICE or Texas DPS, or both law enforcement agencies, count the arrest.
Bed space also limits the number of arrests ICE can make since DHS must have a space to hold the illegal alien while paperwork and logistics are completed ahead of deportations.
Furthermore, as a Trump administration official explained, ICE is smaller than CBP and likely has fewer resources to dedicate to data collection and reporting.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, DHS law enforcement officers are delivering on the mandate to Make America Safe Again,” the DHS spokesperson said, adding that arrest and deportation numbers have “already shattered records.”
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