US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an astounding 11,000 illegal migrants in the first 18 days of the Trump administration – which is already a third of the total busts the agency made last year under former President Joe Biden, The Post has learned.
The arrests, part of President Trump’s mass deportation offensive, collared a previously deported Mexican cartel hitman, according to Department of Homeland Security sources.
ICE agents in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, nabbed Fernando Vasquez-Mendoza, who was identified as a hired killer working for Cartel del Golfo, or Gulf Cartel, a Mexican drug trafficking organization and criminal syndicate.
It is unclear when Vasquez-Mendoza was previously deported or when he snuck back into the US.
The federal immigration authorities also arrested several members of the vicious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and multiple child sex offenders, according to sources.
One of the TdA gangbangers captured in New York, Cristian Jose Concepcion-Manrique, snuck across the border into El Paso in December and has a prior criminal conviction for assault.
ICE made 33,000 arrests last year in total, DHS sources said.
The staggering uptick in busts means ICE has had to scramble to find more space to detain the illegal migrants targeted by Trump’s major crackdown.
The agency was expected to open four detention facilities Friday operated by the Bureau of Prisons to expand bed space, a high-level ICE source told The Post.
The agency currently has the funds to hold 41,500 detainees, but it is already “burning well over that to the tune of several hundred million dollars,” the source said.
The plan to expand detention space for illegal migrants has been in the works since November, they added.
“Some of the challenges associated with that have been the fact that we weren’t able to do all that much prior to the [Trump] administration,” the ICE source said.
“While we’ve been planning for this, it takes a while to turn these things on,” they explained.
It’s unclear which prison facilities ICE will utilize and how many more beds it will provide.
The Trump administration has already squeezed more space from the Pentagon, flying some of the most “dangerous” illegal migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Guantanamo Bay has traditionally been used to house foreign terrorists captured by the US, but has always had room — about 120 beds — to house migrants caught trying to sneak into the US through the Gulf of Mexico.
President Trump plans to expand Guantanamo’s capacity to hold illegal immigrants, signing an order on Jan. 29 directing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to prepare the naval base for 30,000 detainees.
ICE is also getting some support from state and local law enforcement agencies who are willing to take in illegal migrants through the agency’s 287g program, which deputizes local authorities to hold illegal immigrants in their jails on behalf of ICE.
The Trump administration is also gearing up to restart family detention, which ended under the Biden administration, and will reopen a previously shuttered facility, the source added.
