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ICE arrests nearly 50,000 in July, highest monthly total under Trump
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest monthly total of the second Trump administration, according to new data analyzed by the Associated Press.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest single monthly total of the second Trump administration, according to new government figures. The 49,571 arrests mark a 15% jump from June and a 70% increase from February, signaling that the administration has continued its mass deportation push despite shifting tactics away from the high-profile city operations that drew public backlash earlier this year.
The data, provided by ICE to the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Associated Press, shows enforcement has become more diffuse and less visible. Officers have increasingly made arrests at traffic stops, relied on state and local law enforcement partners, and begun targeting Haitian immigrants whose deportation protections were stripped away. Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, reflecting the growing importance of those states and their cooperation agreements with ICE.
Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for more immigration restrictions, said the administration “didn’t stop the enforcement” but rather “changed the tactics and are, if anything, being more effective.” The shift follows a period of high-profile operations in Democratic-led cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, where videos showed officers bursting from vans and rappelling from helicopters. Krikorian said those tactics were “provoking a lot of ordinary people, turning them off even if they liked the idea of the immigration law being enforced.”
Immigration arrests hovered at just over 8,000 per month before President Donald Trump took office, a figure largely made up of immigrants transferred from local jails and prisons. During Trump’s first year, the numbers began climbing as the administration loosened restrictions on where and who ICE could arrest and infused the agency with billions of dollars. By December, monthly arrests had reached more than 40,000, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Arrests fell in February after two fatal shootings in Minnesota sparked protests and criticism from Democratic lawmakers, and they remained stagnant for months before surging in June. The July spike comes as the agency, funded with billions of dollars by Congress last summer, has hired 12,000 new deportation officers and investigative agents.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who pledged in his confirmation hearing to keep ICE out of the headlines, has overseen the enforcement surge. His tenure has been marked by several fatal shootings of immigrants during encounters with ICE officers, and the figures show he has not shifted the agency from Trump’s vision for mass deportations. Under his predecessor, Kristi Noem, enforcement was often characterized by highly publicized operations targeting specific cities.
Patricia Quiñonez, a journalist at Utahlozanos, which covers the Venezuelan immigrant community in Utah, said immigration arrests during traffic stops have increased sharply in recent months. “They stop you for whatever reason — for example, you don’t have a drivers’ license, your vehicle tags are expired, your windows are more tinted than what is allowed. From there, they take advantage of the situation and ask about immigration.” People with valid work permits and pending asylum claims are among those arrested, she said, and she believes they are being targeted by race.
