Exclusive | ICE makes staggering 11K illegal migrant arrests in just 18 days forcing agency to take over four federal prisons
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 thes...