When President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was immediately unleashed to begin apprehending and deporting thousands of illegal aliens with criminal records and final removal orders.

At the estimated current rate of daily arrests, ICE is reportedly on track to arrest nearly 1 million criminal illegal aliens by the end of Trump's second term in office, according to Just the News.

While that may seem substantial, particularly in comparison to the prior administration's lax enforcement policies, it is reportedly still well short of the numbers Trump hoped to see and some reports suggest the White House has urged ICE to pick up the pace on daily arrests of illegal migrants.

On track for 1 million arrests

Just the News noted that ICE initially provided daily updates on the number of arrests made and detainers lodged against criminal illegal aliens but suddenly stopped doing so at the beginning of the month, perhaps due to leaks about impending operations and obstruction from local activists and officials.

Immigration officials insist that daily arrests are still occurring and, as of Thursday, Border Czar Tom Homan estimated that around 11,000 had been arrested since Jan. 20.

Extrapolating from the known numbers for the first week or so of Trump's tenure, ICE has averaged around 650 arrests per day, which would put the agency on a pace to make nearly 1 million arrests in total over the next four years.

That number could be higher, given the appearance of an uptick in the daily arrest numbers before those figures stopped being publicly shared, but the pace is still well short of what Trump would presumably like it to be, as he reportedly aims to arrest and remove several million illegal migrants over his second term.

Trump wants the pace of arrests increased

That President Trump may be displeased with ICE's pace thus far was the clear implication of a CNN report on Friday that, citing multiple anonymous sources, alleged that senior White House officials were quietly pressuring ICE behind the scenes to dramatically increase the rate of arrests per day.

"They’re treading water. They’re way behind," one unnamed official said of ICE, and made mention of conference calls involving top Cabinet and White House officials that were "not pretty."

Indeed, The Washington Post reported about a week ago that some senior Trump officials had allegedly set daily quotas for ICE, including a demand for each field office to make at least 75 arrests per day, with a goal of driving up the overall daily arrest rate from several hundred to around 1,200 to 1,500 per day.

Still, the estimated current pace of daily ICE arrests is higher than it was during the Biden-Harris administration, which a spokesperson for the White House made sure to point out in a statement to CNN.

"The Trump administration has re-established a no-nonsense enforcement of and respect for the immigration laws of the United States," the spokesperson said. "Hundreds of violent, predatory, and gang-affiliated criminal illegal aliens have already been rounded up and deported by ICE since President Trump took office -- and the Trump administration is aligned on securing our borders and ensuring that mass deportations are conducted quickly and effectively to put Americans and America First."

ICE needs more agents and resources to be more effective

To seriously pick up the pace on daily arrests of illegal aliens, the Trump White House and ICE will likely need assistance from Congress in the form of increased funding for agents, detention beds, and deportation flights, not to mention more border security to prevent the influx of more arrestable and deportable illegal migrants, among other things.

According to a report from Politico last week, the Republican-controlled House and Senate are both currently working on bills that would do exactly that and then some, but given the staunch opposition and uncooperativeness of Democrats and the parliamentary maneuvers the GOP must resort to, there is no telling when or even if those bills will come up for a vote.