AMNA NAWAZ: The Supreme Court said today it would hear the Trump administration's ban on asylum claims at the southern border.

President Trump enacted the ban the first day of his second term, and a lower court judge has since ruled the policy is illegal.

This comes as the Department of Homeland Security reports immigrant deportations and arrests hit an all-time high.

William Brangham has the latest.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Amna, more than 491,000 people were arrested by U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in the last fiscal year, and more than 483,000 of those people were deported.

That record high is being touted by the Trump administration, which has said it aims to deport one million immigrants annually.

For more on these numbers, we turn to John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under President Obama.

John, very nice to have you back on the program.

This new set of numbers is a record high for ICE deportations and arrests, breaking last year's record.

What do you make of these numbers?

JOHN SANDWEG, Former Acting ICE Director: Yes, it's a truly remarkable number, William.

You have to remember historically a significant portion of ICE's deportations actually came from the border.

So these were individuals that were not arrested by ICE agents, but rather Border Patrol agents handed over to ICE, and then ICE executes the removal.

Typically, the reason that's significant is those individuals can be deported much more quickly.

And if you look back in 2012, the prior -- the original record during the Obama administration of 410,000 removals, over about 250,000 of those individuals were actually those apprehended at the border.

So what it highlights for me is just the remarkable way in which the Trump administration has really wrangled the immigration enforcement system to move at a pace like we have never seen before, expediting -- not only increasing the number of arrests, but expediting the processing of those individuals on the back end and then removing them from the country.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And the administration argues it's only halfway there.

It would like to notch up to a million deportations.

Does our system have that capacity to do that?

JOHN SANDWEG: You know, look, the administration's put a lot of resources in increasing the size of ICE.

And what that does is certainly increase the number of individuals that could be apprehended annually.

But their biggest challenge is on the back end, which is the immigration courts.

The majority of the immigrants that are in the interior of the United States -- at the border, there are ways to administratively what's called expedite a removal.

If you have -- catch someone as they enter the United States, you can quickly serve them a deportation order without seeing an immigration judge.

But for the population in the interior, where most of this work is now focused, most of these individuals are required to see an immigration judge.

We have not seen significant -- we have seen the Trump administration put a lot of pressure on those courts to expedite cases, but we haven't seen them put significant resources in there.

Unless and until we see a real expansion of the immigration courts so that these new handpicked judges by the Trump administration can issue those deportation orders more quickly, it's really hard to see -- even with all these new ICE resources coming online, really hard to see them getting up to a million deportations in a year.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, as you well know, ICE's actions on the interior have caused a great deal of blowback.

We have seen children being arrested.

We have seen U.S.

citizens being arrested.

Of course, several Americans were killed.

There was a great deal of pushback against the administration.

We saw some of that reflected in the midterm elections.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin was asked about whether or not he had been told by the administration to dial that back recently.

Here's what he had to say.

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX News Anchor: And my question to you tonight is, have you been given instructions to lighten up on enforcement?

MARKWAYNE MULLIN, U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary: Not at all.

Not at all.

LAURA INGRAHAM: Not at all?

MARKWAYNE MULLIN: Not at all.

We have changed our priorities from doing -- from doing, let's say, job site raids to doing warrant raids, meaning that we go into cities and we go after the worst of the worst.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Worst of the worst, that's what you hear from the administration constantly.

Are these types of raids the best way to try and capture and remove the hardened criminals in this country?

JOHN SANDWEG: Yes, unfortunately not.

As you look at this data today, right, what you're seeing is it's really not about the worst of the worst.

The problem, the challenge that the secretary faces, and the contradiction in what he says is that, in immigration enforcement, if you're trying to drive up the total number of deportations, trying to hit a high number like this administration is trying to do, it pushes ICE to focus on more on those noncriminal populations.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

The first is that generally that population is easier to find.

The hardened criminals are more adept at hiding, and they make it harder on the agents to track them down.

It requires a lot more work just to make that one apprehension.

But the second problem is that, because of those due process issues I mentioned a moment ago and these backlogs in the immigration court, it pushes the ICE agents to focus on populations not based on whether or not you have a criminal history, but whether or not on -- or on how quickly ICE can actually deport you after they arrest you.

And so what you're seeing, a lot of what we're seeing the ICE do today, through these tactics and through some of their targeted operations, is focusing on populations that are quick, easy to deport, because either, A, let's say they were previously ordered to deport five, six years ago, but ICE gave them a stay, allowed them to stay in the country for humanitarian circumstances, or just people who didn't leave the country, but were not detained when they went through the court process.

In either of those cases, typically, those populations tend to be the more sympathetic populations, right, the populations that lived here longer, that don't have a criminal history.

And so that's the juxtaposition's position.

As they feel this pressure to ramp up the number of arrests, the only way to do that is not by focusing on the worst of the worst, but on the rest of the population, which is just easier to remove.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, that is former Acting Director of ICE John Sandweg.

Always great to hear from you.

Thank you.

JOHN SANDWEG: Thank you so much.