The way Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is doing its job has provoked a common thought in the mind of most Americans, which is, I thought ICE was going to be aggressively arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants who are committing or have committed crimes, not immigrants who are here illegally but other than that are law-abiding productive people who are making positive contributions to our community. The explanation offered for aggressively arresting non-criminal undocumented immigrants is that ICE is trying to meet daily arrest quotas set by the White House, which is partially true, but the lion’s share of the explanation of why ICE does what it does is a secret reason the White House will never admit!!!
President Donald Trump has yet to fulfill two of his campaign pledges: one to deport more undocumented immigrants in one year than any other administration, and secondly, to deport millions of undocumented immigrants each year. Last year in 2025, the Trump administration deported 500,000 undocumented immigrants, 230,000 of them were arrested inside the country, and another 270,000 were arrested at the border trying to enter America illegally. An estimated 40,000 undocumented immigrants agreed to self-deport and receive a $1000 stipend through a new program and app provided by the Trump administration.
This brought the total of undocumented immigrants who were deported or self-deported from America by the Trump administration in 2025 to 540,000. Surprisingly, with all the aggressiveness ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol (CBP) have shown chasing down undocumented immigrants, that’s 50,000 fewer than the 590,000 undocumented immigrants former President Joe Biden’s administration deported in 2023, and 110,000 fewer than the 650,000 undocumented immigrants the Biden administration deported in 2024. However, the 230,000 undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration arrested inside and deported from America in one year, 2025, were more than the undocumented immigrants the Biden administration arrested inside the country during the entire 4 years of the Biden administration.
That’s due primarily to the fact that the vast majority of Biden deportations came from arresting people at the border. The fact that Biden’s deportation numbers are larger than Trump’s deportation numbers because of the vast number of undocumented immigrants Biden arrested at the border, and not because of all the undocumented immigrants Biden arrested inside America, makes President Trump’s constant claim that “sleepy Joe Biden had an open border that let millions of undocumented criminals into America” more myth than fact. Now that President Trump has completely closed the border, there are no longer any immigrants showing up at the border and attempting to enter America illegally, making it even harder for President Trump to fulfill his campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants each year.
But the GOAT of deporting undocumented immigrants is none other than former President Barack Obama, who deported over 3 million undocumented immigrants from America, so far it’s more than any other President in American history. His deportation success caused immigrant rights advocates, activists, and many media outlets to label Obama the “Deporter in Chief”. Obama achieved his deportation success by shifting away from the focus of his predecessors, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who focused on deporting immigrants who had entered and lived in the United States illegally. Obama focused on deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions and on deporting undocumented immigrants who had recently illegally crossed the border, which prevented them from becoming integrated into U.S. communities.
Obama was first able to focus on deporting arrested or convicted undocumented immigrants by greatly expanding the Secure Communities program, which was initiated by former President George W. Bush in 2008. Secure Communities was a data-sharing program between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. It was designed to check the immigration status of every person arrested by state and local police anywhere in the country. Fingerprints that were collected when anyone was arrested were forwarded to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). If the fingerprint check indicated that a person was undocumented and in America illegally, the ICE district office for the state, county, or city where the undocumented immigrant was arrested would issue a detainer request that either the person be detained for up to 48 hours (giving ICE enough time to come and arrest the immigrant) or that ICE be notified upon their release.
But as more and more immigrants who had committed minor traffic violations like failing to stop at a stop sign were arrested by local officials and turned over to immigration authorities for deportation, Secure Communities began to drive a wedge between immigrant communities and local law enforcement. Prompting many governors, mayors, and state and local law enforcement officers to refuse to cooperate with Secure Communities because immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who were fearful or resentful of cooperation with Secure Communities, stopped coming forward to report crimes, assist with information, or give witness accounts helpful to crime investigations.
By 2014, Obama ended Secure Communities and replaced it with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). PEP required the same cooperation from state and local law enforcement, but it changed what law violations ICE would issue an arrest and deportation detainer for; no longer would ICE seek to deport undocumented immigrants arrested for minor violations like failing to stop at a stop sign. PEP changed the priority to issuing arrest and deportation detainers for undocumented immigrants to:
Level 1) noncitizens convicted of a felony, those engaged in terrorism or gang activity, or those apprehended at the border while attempting to enter unlawfully;
Level 2) noncitizens convicted of three or more misdemeanor offenses, one significant misdemeanor, or those who recently entered the U.S. without authorization; and
Level 3) noncitizens who have been issued a final order of removal.
Since state and local law enforcement don’t want any immigrant, documented or undocumented, who would qualify for Level 1,2, or 3 in their communities, state and local law enforcement cooperation with the Obama administration by reporting Level 1,2, and 3 arrested undocumented law violators within their prisons and jails resumed. Obama’s deportation success was the largest and most significant factor of the 3 factors that created the secret that President Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Border Czar Tom Holman, and U.S. Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino will never admit or reveal.
The second factor that created the secret was the 605,000 undocumented immigrants with either a criminal arrest or conviction of the total 932,000 undocumented immigrants President Trump deported from 2017 to 2020. And the third and final factor, that created the secret of why ICE does what it does, was the 1,240,000 undocumented immigrants that former President Joe Biden arrested at or turned back at the border in 2023 and 2024 for trying to illegally enter the United States.
The secret is that thanks to Obama’s deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants from 2009 to 2016, who were either arrested or had criminal convictions, thanks to the hundred thousands of undocumented immigrants from 2017 to 2020 that President Trump deported in his first term as President, and thanks to the 1.2 million undocumented immigrants that Biden arrested at or turned back at the border, created the secret that the Trump administration will never admit or reveal, which is: the millions of undocumented criminal aliens that President Trump claims were let into America because of an open border don’t exist!!! At a maximum, the total that remains in America is in the high 100’s, which explains the reason undocumented criminal immigrants are so elusive for ICE to find and deport.
This also explains, for all those wondering why, to make real President Trump’s MAGA campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrant criminals each year, ICE is reduced to hunting down law-abiding, tax-paying, undocumented immigrants with no criminal convictions who, like the millions of immigrants that have migrated to America throughout its 250-year history, are making positive contributions to the world’s only true democratic melting pot America the Great!!!