Immigration and Customs Enforcement now employs more than 22,000 officers and agents, DHS said, up from 10,000 when Trump took office last year. The hiring surge marks a 120% increase to the workforce since July, when Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that provided $8 billion for ICE hiring.
After receiving more than 220,000 applications to join ICE from patriotic Americans, ICE blew past its original hiring target of 10,000 new officers and agents within a year.
The United States admitted an average 250,000 immigrants a year in the 1950s, 330,000 in the 1960s, 450,000 in the 1970s, 735,000 in the 1980s, and over 1 million a year since the 1990s. Almost 110,000 foreigners enter the United States on a typical day.
But congressional Republicans walked away from it early this year at the urging of GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, who was not supportive of the bill because he is centering his reelection campaign on immigration.
ICE Detentions Under the Biden Administration
Of those 1.107 million ICE detentions, just 283,472 involved aliens who weren't initially arrested by CBP at the borders and ports, but rather were the product of interior arrests.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement now employs more than 22,000 officers and agents, DHS said, up from 10,000 when Trump took office last year. The hiring surge marks a 120% increase to the workforce since July, when Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that provided $8 billion for ICE hiring.
As of 2022, unauthorized immigrants made up 3.3% of the US population, though nearly one-third of those immigrants have temporary permission to be in the United States, such as those in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
List of people granted executive clemency in the second Trump presidency. In his role as the 47th president of the United States (January 20, 2025 – present), Donald Trump granted executive clemency to more than 1,600 individuals as of July 23, 2025, all of whom were charged or convicted of federal criminal offenses.
Under President Biden, more than two million immigrants per year have entered, government data shows.
President Biden signed a total of 162 executive orders during his singular term, from January 2021 to January 2025. As of January 22, 2025, 67 of them (41%) have been revoked by his successor, Donald Trump. 0 30 60 90 120 150 180 1/20/2021 9/3/2021 9/15/2022 3/4/2024 y Cumulative number of executive orders signed...
On January 14, 2026, the U.S. Department of State (DoS) announced an indefinite pause (effective January 21, 2026) in immigrant visa processing for nationals of 75 countries.
This allowed millions of illegal aliens – including criminals, gang members, and terrorists – into our country. But in just 100 days, President Trump and Secretary Noem have not only closed our border but have delivered the most secure border in American history.
Filmed mainly inside airports, Border Security is an observational documentary; factual programming which takes viewers behind the scenes of Customs and its partner agencies, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
President Biden changed Trump-era border policies by ending the "Remain in Mexico" (MPP) program and Title 42 expulsions (though Title 42 was challenged in court and expanded before ending in 2023), halting border wall construction, and ending travel bans, while also creating new pathways like parole programs for some nationalities and focusing on legal pathways, though his administration later implemented stricter enforcement measures, including new asylum restrictions when encounters surged.
Immigration remained relatively low during the 20 years following World War II, because the 1920s national-origins system remained in place after Congress re-codified and combined all previous immigration and naturalization law into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
The United States takes in the most immigrants by total number, hosting tens of millions more than any other country, followed by countries like Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the UK. However, if looking at the percentage of immigrants relative to the total population, smaller nations like the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait have much higher shares of foreign-born residents.
On November 20, 2014, the President announced a series of executive actions to crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay taxes in order to temporarily stay in the U.S. without fear of ...