Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a record average of more than 800 people without criminal records per day in July on average, new federal data shows. The increase in arrests comes as the White House pressures the agency to reach a goal of 2,000 a day. July is the first month of President Trump’s second term in which people with only civil immigration violations, rather than criminal charges or pending convictions, made up more than half of those arrested. An average of more than 1,580 people were arrested each day in July, also a new record for the current administration. Enforcement ramped up this summer after a dip following public backlash over the Department of Homeland Security operation in Minneapolis, a funding impasse and a shakeup in DHS leadership. But, as has been the case with previous ICE crackdowns in big cities, the rise in arrest totals is accompanied by spikes in community arrests of people without criminal records. Administration officials have repeatedly claimed that their law enforcement efforts focus on “the worst of the worst” and often tout arrests of immigrants with violent criminal convictions. Those with convictions for violent crimes as defined by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics represent about 6% of all ICE detainees under the current administration, and about 4% of those detained in July, the data shows. “ICE enforces the law as it is written. What makes someone a target for immigration authorities is whether or not they are in the U.S. illegally, period,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News. “Many of the individuals who are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights violators, gangsters and more; they simply have no record in the US.” The data, obtained from ICE by the Deportation Data Project run by the University of California, Berkeley and UCLA, does not provide information about immigrants’ alleged crimes in other countries. CBS News asked DHS to provide that data. White House border czar Tom Homan has said that sanctuary policies that prevent local authorities from turning over people held in jails and prisons to ICE force them to “flood the zone” and deploy more resources to those cities to find and arrest their targets and anyone else they find living illegally in the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has made similar claims. “I’m just saying, let’s work to get the worst of the worst off the streets and then you won’t see me in your cities and states like you do so much,” Mullin said at a conference of state governors earlier this month, urging them to increase local police cooperation with ICE. “They probably won’t even see us.” But data from June and July suggests that ICE agents making arrests in communities are not focusing their efforts solely on areas the administration considers sanctuary jurisdictions. Those cities and states saw a 27% increase in street arrests during those months compared to the previous six, compared with a 50% increase everywhere else, CBS News’ analysis of data found. In Florida, where state law requires local authorities to collaborate with ICE, federal agents made nearly four times as many street arrests in June and July compared to the average for the previous six months. The increase was greatest in Jacksonville, where the average monthly total of arrests increased from 15 to 165 this summer. Miami saw an average of 715 per month in June and July, up from 115. In Texas, another state without sanctuary policies, community arrests tripled in El Paso and Austin. While the overall increase in street arrests in cities with sanctuary policies was smaller, some of them saw comparable increases. These arrests in San Ysidro, California, near the US-Mexico border, were more than six times higher in June and July than in previous months, and doubled in Denver, Colorado, and Newark, New Jersey. The increase in arrests has come without much-publicized crackdowns focused on cities, and officers have instead resorted to traffic stops, airport arrests and immigration checkpoint arrests. The killing of two immigrants by federal agents in Maine and Texas during attempted traffic stops reignited outrage. At least 45,300 ICE arrests in June and July — nearly half of all arrests during those two months — were made in communities rather than jails or prisons. About 12,700 more came from what are known as 287(g) agreements, in which local law enforcement officials are empowered to make immigration-related arrests. Some street or custodial arrests may also have occurred through 287(g) programs without being labeled as such. ICE has 287(g) agreements with more than 1,850 municipal, county and state agencies. That number has increased each month as DHS seeks to expand the program, allocating $1.15 billion through September 2027. Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misstated the average number of ICE arrests per month in Jacksonville, Florida. This summer they increased from 15 to 165, not 18 to 166. The accompanying bar chart has also been updated. Go deeper with The Free Press on:
