ICE arrests reached record highs this summer as enforcement tactics shifted

The Trump administration reached a record number of immigration-related arrests over the last three months, even as the dramatic increase did not mirror the militarized spectacle seen at the start of the year. The tactics over the summer instead focused on street arrests and working with local jails and local law enforcement, with sweeps hitting cities like Houston, New York, Memphis, San Francisco and Atlanta.

Immigration officers have also focused on arrests at airports, courthouses and ICE check-ins.

In August alone, ICE officers and agents arrested a record 50,925 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

That new high came on the heels of 50,208 arrests in July, which was the record at the time, according to DHS. Officers made nearly 44,000 arrests in June.

These arrests follow a recent mandate to ICE field offices to arrest 2,000 people per day nationwide. ICE in August averaged around 1,600 arrests per day; ICE officers were arresting around 1,000 people a day before the mandate. The recent increase is part of a “new normal” that ICE hopes to maintain, a source familiar with the arrest operations said earlier this summer.

“The hard-working men and women of DHS continue to break records as they defend the homeland and protect the American people,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. “For the third straight month, ICE set a new record for the highest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month, nearly 51,000.”

In the winter, DHS sent large law enforcement operations to Democratic cities, culminating in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January in Minneapolis. Their deaths led to protesters flooding the streets in Minnesota and cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

After the wave of anti-ICE criticism from residents and lawmakers, DHS underwent a regime change, with border czar Tom Homan taking over from ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at the time and the removal of Gregory Bovino from the position of Border Patrol commander at large.

Now tactics have shifted away from flooding cities with targeted and branded operations. Yet monthly arrests reached more than 10,000 in July in Texas alone, along with more than 5,500 in Florida, more than 2,000 in Arizona and more than 1,800 in New Jersey, according to the Deportation Data Project. In Memphis, 120 people were arrested during a single raid last month.

“Arrests this summer have continued to increase basically unabated,” said Juan Proaño, the CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

The states that saw the largest number of arrests were Texas and Florida, according to data from the Deportation Data Project, an initiative by the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, to track ICE arrests and detentions.

Both Texas and Florida have seen increasing cooperation with local law enforcement. There were 10,331 ICE arrests in Texas in July, compared with 5,787 in July of last year, and 5,501 arrests in Florida in July, compared with 1,938 last year.

The surges also occurred in California, New York and New Jersey, all Democratic states.

The Deportation Data Project found that there were not only a record number of arrests in communities in recent months, but also a jump in ICE requests for local jails to hold people on its behalf. Arrests also increased in areas where local police can perform some immigration enforcement duties.

An increasing majority of those arrested did not have criminal convictions, according to the Deportation Data Project.

In July, 73.5% of people arrested by ICE did not have criminal convictions compared with 62.6% last year, according to the Deportation Data Project. Meanwhile, 24.8% had convictions for nonviolent crimes and 1.6% had convictions for violent crimes this year, versus 34.5% and 2.9% last year.