WASHINGTON — White House border czar Tom Homan said Monday that about 139,000 illegal immigrants have been deported since President Trump took office 98 days ago.
“Last time I was counting it was 139,000 deportations. Am I happy with the numbers? The numbers are good, especially if you look at the ICE numbers,” Homan said at a White House briefing.
Homan added that the numbers mostly reflect people busted in the US interior — rather than those turned away at the southern border, where apprehensions have hit record lows for two consecutive months.
“The ICE arrests and removals are far beyond Biden’s,” he announced.
“I read the media … ‘the deportations are behind the Biden administration.’ Well, why? Because they counted border removal. We don’t have 10.5 million people crossing the border. We don’t have border removals.”
Homan said that he believes “over 20 million” illegal immigrants currently are in the US, but his efforts would focus on the nearly 700,000 who have been accused or convicted of crimes.
“Last I looked, it was about 700,000 illegal aliens with criminal charges walking the streets of this country — 700,000, and that’s who we’re looking for now, that’s [what we’re] prioritizing, them and national security threats,” he said.
Homan shared the lectern with press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who described executive orders that Trump will sign later on Monday targeting “sanctuary” jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials.
The White House driveway was lined with mugshots Monday morning showing some of the illegal immigrants who have been arrested and placed in deportation proceedings since January for offenses including rape and child molestation.
“It’s sick. It’s the worst crime in the world when you sexually assault a child, I mean, the most innocent of us all,” Homan said at the briefing.
“There’s no more heinous crime. And as you can see, the amount of child rapists we’ve arrested under this administration that could have been arrested under the Biden administration … but they didn’t go look for them. They were too busy releasing millions of illegal aliens into this country.”
Trump took office vowing to mass-deport millions of illegal immigrants and his appointees have started efforts to repeal temporary protections for many asylum seekers allowed into the US by the Biden administration, which used so-called “humanitarian parole” in a way that Republicans alleged contributed to a border rush.
In March, only about 11,000 people were apprehended illegally crossing the US-Mexico border — the lowest on record — after fewer than 12,000 crossed in February.
The two-month total was a roughly 94% reduction from the number for the same period in 2024.
