ICE Crackdown After Midterms: No Slowdown, White House Says

There will be no pause in the ICE crackdown after midterms that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security said this weekend. For immigrants with pending cases or ICE check-ins, and for employers, the 2026 arrest pace is the baseline going into 2027, not a high-water mark.

“This administration will not slow down its efforts to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens who terrorize our communities,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement reported by CBS News on Sunday, Nov. 8. A DHS spokesperson told CBS that “ICE is NOT backing away or slowing down,” adding that the department would keep enforcing the law under President Trump and Secretary Markwayne Mullin, according to the BBC, which carried the same statements.

The statements arrive two days after Trump named Stephen Miller, the president’s longtime immigration adviser, as White House chief of staff, a move that put immigration at the center of the West Wing.

What the reported arrest target would mean in numbers

CBS News reported, citing agency sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, that ICE officials were instructed in recent weeks to aim for about 19,000 arrests a week, or roughly 2,700 a day, up from an earlier target of 2,000 a day, and that the new figure was set before the election. The on-record statements CBS published did not address that figure. It is below the 3,000-a-day goal Axios reported Miller set in May 2025, but well above recent detention bookings.

Data compiled by TRAC at Syracuse University show that 43,138 people were booked into ICE detention in June 2026, of whom 39,563 were arrested by ICE and the rest by Customs and Border Protection. Based on those TRAC figures, ICE arrests leading to a detention booking ran at about 1,300 a day that month. A 2,700-a-day pace would be roughly double that, though not every arrest ends in a detention booking.

The same TRAC data show 65,765 people held in ICE detention as of July 11, 2026, and 46,436 of them, or 70.6 percent, had no criminal conviction. That count includes people with pending charges, but it tempers the White House emphasis on criminals, and a steep rise in daily arrests would draw further on people whose violations are civil, such as visa overstays and old removal orders.

Can Congress slow the ICE crackdown after midterms?

Much of the administration’s confidence rests on money already in the bank. CBS News reported that ICE received $75 billion through 2029 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the 2025 budget reconciliation law. Because that money was enacted as multiyear funding, a new majority cannot simply decline to renew it; clawing it back would take a new law the president could veto.

“They have the money. They have the resources,” Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former DHS immigration policy official under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, told CBS, predicting that enforcement would “continue apace.”

What a Democratic Congress can do is investigate. Committee chairs gain subpoena power and leverage over the annual DHS spending bill. The mechanics are laid out in what a House panel can do with ICE subpoenas. Oversight can raise the political cost of a policy.

Cities are another pressure point. Houston’s mayor said he would limit police cooperation with ICE, CBS reported, a shift traced in the Houston cooperation order and Austin’s pending policy rewrite. Less help from local jails usually pushes ICE toward slower, more visible at-large arrests.

Voters, Vance and the worksite question

The election results left room for different readings. CBS News reported that 58 percent of voters nationwide said the deportation crackdown had gone too far, while the BBC noted that exit polls placed immigration third among voter concerns, behind the economy and the state of democracy.

The most notable signal of a possible change in direction came from Vice President JD Vance, who wrote online after the results that he was open to changing enforcement by focusing more on businesses that hire unauthorized workers, the BBC reported. That is not a policy announcement, and DHS has signaled no shift. But it fits Vance’s earlier focus on employers in the H-1B and PERM programs, and it points to where any recalibration is most likely: worksite enforcement and Form I-9 audits rather than fewer street arrests.

For employers, I-9 files deserve attention before any change in emphasis is announced. For individuals, nothing in the post-election statements lowers the risk at an ICE check-in, a USCIS interview or a traffic stop; people with old removal orders or lapsed status face the same exposure as last week.

The markers to watch are ICE’s monthly detention data, any DHS worksite guidance and the first oversight hearings in January. Miller’s record, reviewed in the record behind the new chief of staff, suggests the arrest numbers are more likely to rise than fall in the two months before that first hearing.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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