Federal immigration agents have been told to nearly double their daily arrest pace just as Stephen Miller takes the reins as White House chief of staff — and officials tell CBS News there is no sign the midterm drubbing Republicans just absorbed is going to change that.

Agency sources say Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were recently instructed to aim for roughly 19,000 arrests a week — about 2,700 a day — up from a 2,000-a-day target that was set before last week's elections. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and ICE say they have received no instructions to pull back since Election Day.

"I would count on the opposite," one official told CBS News when asked whether the midterms might soften the crackdown.

A promotion, not a pause

The timing is what has immigration-watchers talking. Miller, long described as the chief architect of the administration's hardline deportation push, was elevated from deputy chief of staff to the top job this past week, replacing Susie Wiles. Officials inside the administration point to that move as the clearest signal yet that enforcement, not retreat, is the plan heading into 2027.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former DHS immigration official who served under both the Bush and Obama administrations, predicted agents in the field won't notice any letup. "They're going to continue apace," she said. "They have the money. They have the resources."

"THEY HAVE THE MONEY. THEY HAVE THE RESOURCES."

That funding point matters: ICE has roughly $75 billion locked in through 2029 under earlier legislation, giving the agency a multi-year runway that doesn't depend on this Congress — or the next one — agreeing to anything.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said the administration "will not slow down" its effort to arrest and deport what she called "criminal illegal aliens who terrorize our communities," and described President Trump as the strongest president on immigration enforcement in the nation's history.

The politics cut both ways

Exit polling after last week's elections found 58% of voters nationwide said the deportation crackdown had "gone too far," and administration officials privately attribute the bulk of the GOP's losses to the economy, affordability and the war with Iran rather than to immigration policy specifically — a reading that, if accurate, removes any political incentive to ease up.

Local pushback is already forming. Houston's mayor said this week the city would limit how much its police cooperate with ICE, a sign that Democratic-run cities emboldened by the midterms may try to blunt enforcement at the local level even without touching federal policy. A separate report from NewsNation, citing a former ICE official, likewise concluded that operations aren't going to slow under Miller's watch.

The bigger fight is still a couple of months off. Democrats take control of both the House and Senate in January, handing the party subpoena power and oversight hearings they can use to scrutinize ICE's budget, tactics and the new arrest quotas directly. Whether that translates into actual funding restrictions — as opposed to hearings and headlines — is the question hanging over the next session of Congress.

For now, the instructions flowing down to field offices point in only one direction: more arrests, not fewer, with the man who built the policy now running the West Wing.