Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have skyrocketed during President Donald Trump’s second term, but they’re still well below the benchmarks set by White House officials.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Axios that since Trump’s return to office, agents under DHS authority have arrested nearly 579,000 “illegal aliens.” The spike in immigration arrests is credited to anti-immigration policies championed by White House Deputy Chief of Staff and immigration czar Stephen Miller.
According to government data obtained by the outlet, ICE has been arresting roughly 1,100 people per day in recent weeks. While this number is significantly higher than the 821 arrested on average per day in the first ten months of the year, it is still some way off the administration’s goal of 3,000-per-day.
The Trump administration initially insisted that only illegal migrants with criminal records would be targeted for its sweeps, but that standard has fallen by the wayside. A majority of those arrested don’t have a conviction, while agents are being encouraged to make “collateral arrests,” including undocumented people who happen to be with someone on a target list, according to Axios.
That is a departure from the Biden administration, when individuals without criminal records were not prioritized in immigration arrests.
“The new data confirms that the Trump administration isn’t focused on legitimate public safety risks, but rather on hitting politically motivated arrest targets,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told Axios.
He said that DHS is “sweeping up families and workers with clean records and arresting people who are complying with their obligations to attend court hearings and check-ins,”
In a recent incident, immigration agents arrested and deported a 19-year-old college student who was trying to fly home to surprise her family on Thanksgiving, even though a court order ruled that she should be allowed to stay in the U.S.
Immigration raids across the country have sparked lawsuits in their wake, but the Trump administration has been dragging its heels on complying with court orders resulting from that litigation.
In Chicago, a judge ordered that 600 people detained by immigration agents be released after they were arrested without a warrant. A judge in Washington, D.C. halted similar warrantless arrests following a lawsuit challenging the practice.
Mclaughlin told Axios that, despite the resistance, this is “just the beginning.”
“This is just the beginning. President Trump and Secretary Noem have jump-started an agency that was vilified and barred from doing its job for the last four years,” she said.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson made similar comments, insisting that President Donald Trump is “delivering on the President’s promise to the American people by carrying out the largest mass deportation operation of criminal illegal aliens in American history.”
“Despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful rulings by lower courts, the arrests and deportations will continue,” she said.
That “unprecedented number of legal challenges” is likely to grow thanks to immigration agents’ lack of discernment in their arrests. According to a recent ProPublica report, at least 170 — but likely many more — American citizens have been detained by ICE, with dozens held for more than a day without being given a chance to call loved ones or a lawyer.
Some of those citizens report having been beaten, tased, tackled, dragged, and shot by immigration agents during their arrests. Others report having been held outside in detention facilities in nothing more than their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when they were detained.
