It turns out that the illegal immigration crisis is just as bad - if not worse - than President-Elect Donald Trump has said it is. 

The New York Post reports that the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) New York City field office confirmed as much.

What Kenneth Genalo did was reveal just how bad the situation is in New York. It is so bad that, according to Genalo, it would take "a lifetime" to deport all of the illegal immigrants.

This, of course, is one of Trump's most important campaign promises. There will be more on this in a moment.

The truth is revealed

In an interview with the Post, Genalo said, "In New York City, it would take a lifetime to clear the city of the criminals that we have. We need additional resources."

To be clear, Genalo did not rule out the possibility that New York's illegal immigration problem could be fixed. He only ruled out the possibility that it can be fixed quickly, if things stay as they are. Things, of course, would be expected to change once Trump gets into office.

Genalo went on to say that he focuses specifically on illegal immigrants with criminal records, and, according to him, the number of such illegal immigrants is in the thousands.

He said, "The fact is that I have to focus all of my resources on the worst of the worst, the most egregious violators. All I can tell you is we have leads that we work every day — and it’s not in the hundreds."

The Post notes, "Of the nearly 7.8 million illegal immigrants in the United States, 662,586 are convicted felons or have criminal charges pending, the agency said of data through July 21."

Trump's vow

As a presidential candidate, Trump vowed to fix America's illegal immigration problem, and he has affirmed this vow since becoming the president-elect.

If there was any doubt about this, all once has to do is look at some of the people whom Trump has selected to be part of his administration. This includes Tom Homan, who will be Trump's "border czar."

For those unfamiliar with Homan, he is the former acting ICE director. He is an immigration hardliner, and he is vowed to carry out Trump's plan of deporting America's illegal immigrant population.

Trump is expected to get start on the plan on day one of his administration.

"I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill," Trump said.