Two top Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were reassigned for not meeting deportation goals set by the Trump administration, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Russell Hott and Peter Berg, the top two officials in ICE's enforcement division, were removed from their posts, according to the Post. Hott has been reassigned to the Washington, D.C., field office and Berg to St. Paul, Minnesota, according to the report.
Todd Lyons, the top ICE official in Boston, has been named acting head of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, and Garrett Ripa from Miami will take over as deputy, the Post reported.
Border czar Tom Homan recently told Newsmax that "we've got to step up the pace" on deportations. "We're going to expand the number of teams out there because we've got a lot of criminals arrested," Homan told Newsmax on Jan. 29.
However, ICE is struggling to keep up with the pace of arrests and deportations that President Donald Trump ran on, according to the Post report as well as other outlets. Senior White House officials have expressed frustration with ICE over not meeting expectations.
"They're treading water. They're way behind," a Trump administration official told CNN last week. "It's not pretty."
Acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello told agents last month that the agency should be arresting 1,200-1,400 illegal migrants daily, NBC News reported. But White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller described those quotas "as a floor, not a ceiling," according to CNN.
More than 8,000 illegals had been arrested in the first two weeks of Trump's administration and 461 were released, according to the White House.
"There are more criminal aliens that need to be arrested, hundreds of thousands," Homan told NewsNation on Tuesday, adding, "I'm not satisfied."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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