Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hit a record-breaking milestone this week, arresting more than 2,200 undocumented migrants in a single day.

The arrests were made on Tuesday and come as the agency responds to increasing pressure from the White House to ramp up enforcement operations, according to NBC News.

Newsweek contacted ICE for comment via email outside of office hours.

Why It Matters

The spike in arrests comes just days after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller confirmed that President Donald Trump’s administration will seek to triple the number of ICE arrests.

Trump has vowed to carry out the largest mass deportation program in U.S. history. The White House has said it will go after the “worst of the worst,” and said anyone living in the country illegally is a “criminal.”

What To Know

The new detention figures represent a roughly 37-percent increase in daily arrests compared to the previous week. Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, said on Fox & Friends on Sunday that ICE was previously averaging around 1,600 arrests per day.

In the first 100 days of Trump’s administration, federal immigration agents arrested 66,463 migrants without legal status and removed 65,682 individuals, according to ICE.

ICE has deployed a new strategy of making arrests at immigration courthouses and scheduled immigration appointments.

More than 1,500 migrants with criminal records were arrested on Monday in Massachusetts as a part of one of the largest operations carried out under the administration, according to ICE officials.

What People Are Saying

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Miller told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in May: “We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day so we can get all of the [Joe] Biden, the illegals that were flooded into our country for four years, out of our country.”

Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director of Detention Watch Network said in a statement shared with Newsweek: “‘Operation At Large’ is a hyper-militarized police state and an inflection point in the rising authoritarianism of Trump’s regime.

“The operation doubles ICE’s lockup quota to a shocking 3,000 people a day, deepens interagency police collaboration, including with the FBI, and once approved, will supercharge the already massive police force with up to 21,000 National Guard troops.

“This authoritarian campaign will reportedly weaponize the IRS to target people using tax information and even grant them the unprecedented authority to make arrests. Everyone should be horrified. This is not a ‘crackdown’—this is an affront on daily life.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Arrests at immigration courts continue nationwide, and are getting even more arbitrary.”

What Happens Next

The administration is expected to increase enforcement operations as it looks to remove millions of undocumented migrants as part of the GOP’s flagship mass deportation policy.