Under Trump, ICE Is Far More Likely to Arrest People With No Criminal Record, Data Shows

Immigration arrests and deportations quadrupled in the first nine months of the Trump administration as it sent thousands of federal agents and officers into cities across the country, according to a new report from the Deportation Data Project.

The project, whose directors include a pair of University of California professors, found that federal immigration officers are now arresting vastly more people on the streets and are far more likely to arrest people who have not been convicted of any crime.

From January to October, arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased by a factor of four and the number of subsequent deportations grew 4.6 times due to expanded detention space and fewer releases, according to the report.

The increase appears to be driven by a sharp rise in arrests like those happening in cities such as Los Angeles, where President Trump sent a surge of immigration officials last June, and more recently, Minneapolis, where federal officers have spurred massive protests and killed two citizens.

“The scale of arrests that is documented in these data does rise and fall with the obvious expansion across cities that is taking place,” said Graeme Blair, co-director of the Deportation Data Project and a professor of political science at UCLA.

“Street arrests,” or the arrests of immigrants within cities and towns at places like grocery stores and schools or in worksite raids, are up by a factor of 11.

Blair said the rapid expansion of that practice is relatively new; traditionally, the majority of ICE arrests involved transfers of noncitizens from jails or prisons into immigration custody.

The two biggest spikes in street arrests were recorded in June and October, when ICE launched its surge into Southern California and another in Portland, Ore., respectively.

The data, which the Deportation Data Project gathered through public records requests, does not cover the administration’s latest surge in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The Department of Homeland Security has framed its escalations into urban areas as an effort to “remove the worst of the worst,” calling the immigrants it is focused on detaining “dangerous criminal illegal aliens.” But Blair said the data on detainees’ criminal records — and lack thereof — shows a different pattern.

The number of arrests of immigrants who have convictions for violent crimes has increased by about 30% from levels under the Biden administration, while arrests of people with nonviolent convictions rose 100% and arrests of those without any criminal records are up 600%.

“The administration is saying that it is targeting what it calls the ‘worst of the worst,’ and this is another data point showing that just simply doesn’t appear to be the case,” Blair told reporters on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the data shows that those who are arrested are far less likely to be released, while deportation rates are increasing.

Release within 60 days, which was already somewhat rare at 16%, has dropped to 3%, while deportation within that time period rose from 55% to 69%.

“The most likely reason for this is because the Trump administration has put in place new rules that have been challenged in court, often successfully, to bar release,” said David Hausman, another co-director of the Data Deportation Project and a UC Berkeley law professor.

The report said that the number of detention beds available has expanded as the administration opens new centers, like one in California City in the Mojave Desert, and the number of people arrested at the border actually decreases.

This decline — which began under the Biden administration — is driven both by fewer people attempting to cross into the U.S. and “because the new administration began expelling nearly everyone who did,” the report reads.

In July, ICE also issued new guidance stating that immigrants who cross the border illegally and are taken into custody aren’t eligible for a bond hearing. In September, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a policy backing up that change.

It has been challenged in court, and in November, a federal judge in California vacated the policy, but Blair said he doesn’t believe the administration has been abiding by that decision.

In some cases, immigration attorneys have been able to help clients get bond hearings and release by filing individual habeas petitions, but not all asylum seekers have access to representation, and the backlog of cases makes it difficult for attorneys to keep up.

Hausman said these changes are likely responsible for another major shift: a 21-fold increase in voluntary departures.

“We think there’s some pretty good evidence that these no-release policies are causing people who might have won their cases instead to give up and accept deportation,” he said.

There’s also been increasing concern about the conditions within detention centers. Last year was the deadliest on record for people in ICE custody, and reports have detailed overcrowding and a lack of food at some sites.

The Trump administration has also moved to expand capacity by opening new detention centers at former prison sites, many of which previously closed because of issues like inadequate staffing or abuse allegations.

California representatives have repeatedly raised alarms about one of those new centers, which opened in California City in August, owned and operated by the private prison company CoreCivic under an ICE contract.

South Bay Rep. Ro Khanna said he saw “systemic neglect” inside the facility when he toured earlier this month, and he has demanded a list of records from DHS on health and safety conditions there.

Sen. Adam Schiff said during a tour last week that he heard from detainees who had been struggling to access health care for serious conditions, while Sen. Alex Padilla said he was walking away from the visit more concerned than when he arrived.

“These indiscriminate immigration raids — the heartbreak, the families separated from one another, the loss of life, as we saw in Minneapolis — that’s one trauma,” Schiff said after the visit. “When you walk inside these walls, you experience a different trauma. I am most particularly concerned about the medical issue, because that can be life or death.”