Ninth Circuit Presses DOJ on Alleged ICE Quotas
Government pushes back on claims of numerical enforcement targets, says ICE actions based on law, not arrest metrics.
WASHINGTON — In a formal letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Department of Justice has denied allegations that the Trump administration has set a daily arrest quota for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), following scrutiny from federal judges during oral arguments in Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem.
The July 30 letter, submitted by Yaakov M. Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Division, responds to questions posed by Judges Ronald Gould, Marsha Berzon and Lucy Koh Sung during a July 28 hearing in San Francisco. The court had pressed the government on claims made by the plaintiffs that ICE had been directed to make 3,000 arrests per day—an assertion rooted in public statements by a White House official earlier this year.
“Neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities,” Roth wrote, push…