Two senior officials in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency have been reassigned, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed on Feb. 12.
Russell Hott, who served as acting executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, and his deputy, Peter Berg, have been reassigned, a DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.
Enforcement and Removal Operations leads domestic immigration enforcement, including the removal of illegal immigrants.
The DHS spokesperson declined to provide the new positions for Hott and Berg.
Berg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hott could not be reached.
Todd Lyons, who until recently was an ICE executive based in Washington, is the new head of Enforcement and Removal Operations, according to the ICE website.
The number of illegal immigrant arrests has risen since President Donald Trump took office in January, as Trump and his administration have made immigration enforcement a priority.
The number is about three times higher than it was a year ago, Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told reporters outside the White House this week.
“Three times higher is good, but I’m not satisfied. There’s more criminal aliens that need to be arrested, hundreds of thousands,” Homan said.
Homan said one issue is a lack of cooperation with federal law enforcement on the part of cities.
Instead, so-called sanctuary cities release illegal immigrants from prison, absent a local reason to keep them there. When that happens, federal agents must track them down again to apprehend them for violations of federal law.
As a result, “noncriminals are being arrested at a higher rate and they’re going to keep being arrested at a higher rate,” Homan said.
“Because we can’t arrest that bad guy in the jail, we’ve got to go to the community. When we go to the community, we’re going to find the bad guy. When we find the bad guy, he’s probably with others that aren’t a criminal priority, but they’re going to get arrested, too.
“So, sanctuary cities are going to get exactly what they don’t want. More agents in the neighborhoods and more non criminals being arrested, because they forced us [into] the community.”
Some 11 million illegal immigrants were in the United States on Jan. 1, 2022, according to the DHS.
Homan also said that he learned that some ICE personnel had been releasing illegal immigrants who were arrested back into the community “because some of the personnel are still acting on the last four years of non-enforcement.”
In response, Homan said he met with ICE, and acting Director Caleb Vitello sent a directive instructing ICE officers not to release illegal immigrants unless they receive clearance from ICE headquarters.
