Hundreds of new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff are being sent across the country to bolster immigration enforcement in big cities like New York and Houston and tiny towns like Derby, Vermont, and Caribou, Maine, federal purchasing records show.
The records are for coworking-style offices and desks, but not detention facilities. But they offer a rare but narrow behind-the-scenes glimpse at how White House and Department of Homeland Security officials are preparing to ramp up immigration enforcement nationwide as billions of dollars flow into DHS and its agencies under last summer’s federal spending plan.
ICE plans to deploy about 330 people to cities in more than 40 states, along with Puerto Rico, according to records reviewed by USA TODAY. Texas will receive the most, with 49 people deployed. Other cities targeted for increased ICE presence include Miami, Atlanta, Baltimore, Nashville and Seattle.
Smaller locations include Concho, Arizona; Manhattan, Kansas; and Hot Springs, South Dakota. It was not immediately clear how many of the locations on the list already have ICE or Customs and Border Patrol presence, or if the officers are new hires or relocations.
The new assignments come several months after the Trump administration sharply curtailed its use of high-profile and controversial sweeps and raids in cities like Minneapolis, where two American citizens were fatally shot by federal agents in January.
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White House officials now appear to be ramping up detention and deportation efforts under new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who told Newsmax on May 9 that “we haven’t missed a beat. We are still on track, pushing as hard as we can. We’re just doing it in a different way.”
White House border czar Tom Homan said the administration is preparing a new surge of enforcement to remove people who entered during the Biden administration, particularly in cities where local police don’t cooperate with federal agents. He shrugged off suggestions that the administration was backing down under political pressure.
“You ain’t seen (expletive) yet,” Homan told attendees at the May 5 Border Security Expo in Phoenix. “You will see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen before, so congratulations.”
Homan made similar comments in July 2025, a month after the military and federal agents flooded the streets of downtown Los Angeles, and two months before a similar effort in Chicago known as Operation Midway Blitz.
President Donald Trump campaigned heavily in 2024 on tough immigration enforcement, promising to deport 1 million people a year. Trump said at the time that enforcers would focus primarily on “the worst of the worst,” like rapists and murderers. The Trump administration has carried out 477,277 removals from Jan. 19, 2025, through April 4, 2026, the most recent date for which data was available.
Public sentiment began turning against the White House in 2025 as officers using military-style tactics rounded up large numbers of people whose only crime was illegally entering the United States, chasing them through farm fields or Home Depot parking lots. As of April 4, 2026, 35% of people in immigration detention had no criminal record or pending criminal charges, according to USA TODAY data.
Now, half of all Americans – including 25% of those who voted for Trump as president – said the mass deportation campaigns and ICE deployments have been too aggressive, according to an April poll conducted for Politico.
Homan and some other administration officials argue that anyone caught living illegally in the United States should be deported whenever immigration enforcers find them, regardless of whether they have any additional criminal record.
“We had a historic illegal immigration crisis for four years, so what’s required now?” Homan told CBS News. “A historic mass deportation to deal with these people who entered this country illegally, many released in this country illegally, many of who have no case in this country to be here.”
After the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in January in Minneapolis during immigration-sweep protests, Trump promised a “softer touch” but said he remained committed to mass deportations. He fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in March and replaced her with Mullin, who has maintained a deliberately lower profile.
“We’re purposely wanting to be a little more quiet,” Mullin told Newsmax. “I wanted to get DHS out of the headlines so our agents … could do their job without being harassed by the media. That doesn’t mean we’re slowing down even a little bit.”
Mullin told Newmax that immigration enforcers had detained 1,900 people nationally in a single day earlier in the week, deported about 2,700 people in a week, and was holding more than 60,000 people in detention centers.
Last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave DHS more than $170 billion to conduct immigration enforcement through 2029, including hiring tens of thousands of new ICE officers and CBP agents. In January, DHS said it had already more than doubled ICE staffing from 10,000 to 22,000.
Homan has warned mayors of Democratic cities that agents and officers would “flood” into their communities if they didn’t start cooperating. Many cities across the country have adopted policies limiting how much assistance local police will give immigration officers, including letting them into local jails to detain suspected illegal immigrants.
The White House has sued multiple cities for refusing to assist, although judges have so far been reluctant to order cooperation.
On May 5, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Trump had promised her that there would be no “flood” of immigration agents into her state unless she asked for their help: “All I’ll say to Mr. Homan is that Donald Trump himself said he would not send a surge of ICE agents to the state of New York unless I ask. I’m not asking.”
In a statement, Homeland Security officials said cities that refuse to help immigration enforcers will ultimately see more of them: “When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence to find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities.”
Citing “operational security,” DHS declined to comment on the deployment of the ICE officers around the country.
“ICE agents uphold our nation’s immigration laws in all 50 states, seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” DHS said in a statement.
Contributing: David Ulloa Jr, Arizona Republic
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New wave of ICE deployments to impact 40 or more states
