Noem Says More Than 2 Million Illegal Immigrants Have Left US Under Trump

More than 2 million illegal immigrants have left the United States during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, and more than 10,000 federal immigration agents have been hired so far, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said this week.

“Two million have gone home already, people that were here illegally you have removed and sent home,” Noem said at a White House Cabinet meeting on Dec. 2, speaking to President Donald Trump. “We’re going to send more home for the holidays, too.”

Noem said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has hired around 10,000 new officers this year. Hundreds of thousands of people have applied for ICE jobs, she added.

On Thursday, Noem confirmed in a news interview that the Trump administration is aiming to expand a travel ban to more than 30 countries following Trump’s recent remarks on immigration, and in the aftermath of the Thanksgiving-week shooting of two National Guard members.

“I won’t be specific on the number, but it’s over 30, and the President is continuing to evaluate countries,” the Homeland Security chief told Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle” on Thursday evening.

Noem added that if individuals from certain countries “don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States.”

When asked by host Laura Ingraham about the number of countries that could be banned, Noem did not give a figure. She also did not say what nations could be subject to a travel ban.

In the wake of the shooting in Washington that left one Guard member dead and another seriously wounded, Trump has taken action against a number of countries that he described as being “third-world.”

So far this year, the White House has banned or restricted travel from 19 countries, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Burma, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.

This week, the administration said it is pausing certain applications from people from those same 19 countries. The changes were outlined in a policy memo posted Tuesday on the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency tasked with processing and approving all requests for immigration benefits.

The agency also said it would conduct a “comprehensive re-review” of all “approved benefit requests” for immigrants who entered the country during the Biden administration.

The agency cited the shooting of the two Guard members by a suspect who is an Afghan national as a reason for the pause and heightened scrutiny for people from those countries.

“This memorandum mandates that all aliens meeting these criteria undergo a thorough re-review process, including a potential interview and, if necessary, a re-interview, to fully assess all national security and public safety threats along with any other related grounds of inadmissibility or ineligibility,” the memo stated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.