Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 10,000 people over a five-day period at the end of June, marking a major push by the agency tasked with carrying out the Trump administration's mass deportations agenda.
The arrest numbers, obtained from a person familiar with the information who spoke anonymously to discuss data that has not been publicly released, comes after the agency shifted its approach from high-profile arrest sweeps in major American cities to quieter ways to reach President Donald Trump's deportation goals.
The figures indicate that while the administration is no longer cracking down on individual cities, the arrests continue and are surging.
The total number of arrests during the five-day period starting Friday and ending Tuesday translates into roughly 2,000 arrests per day. It was not clear where the arrests had taken place.
The spike in arrests was first reported by The New York Times.
“Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists,” said the Department of Homeland Security in a statement. “Our message is clear: if you come to our country illegally, we will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you.”
The arrests news also comes as the number of people entered into ICE detention facilities climbed in June to roughly 39,000 after hovering around 30,000 per month since February, according to information obtained by The Associated Press.
ICE doesn't publicly release arrest data, making exact comparisons with previous periods difficult. But according to data provided to UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press, 2,000 arrests per day would mark a sharp increase over previous periods.
December had the most ICE arrests since the beginning of the Trump administration, and that month only averaged 1,283 arrests per day nationwide.
In January, at a time when the administration flooded the streets of Minneapolis and surrounding regions with hundreds of immigration enforcement officers, arrests averaged about 1,212 per day across the country.
But Minneapolis proved to be a turning point in the Trump administration's mass deportations agenda after two American citizens were killed by immigration officers while protesting the crackdown in Minneapolis.
Border Czar Tom Homan started drawing down the number of officers in Minnesota as the agency stepped back from the flashy surge operations that had been common during the tenure of then- Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Operations under Noem headed by former Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino were marked by frequent clashes between immigration enforcement officers and protesters, in footage that was often splashed across the Department's social media channels.
In February, immigration arrests fell to 1,057 a day, according to information from the Deportation Data Project. The Project sued through the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the ICE arrests data and it is only current through February.
After Noem was fired, her successor at Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, suggested he'd be taking a more low-profile approach to immigration enforcement and he aimed to get the department out of the headlines. But Mullin was expected to adopt Trump's priorities on immigration.
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19 Comments
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TaiwanIsNotChina
And how many were criminals? 10%?
sakurasuki
Is it about enforcing the law or about the agency quota?
plasticmonkey
It’s about Stephen Miller’s hatred of non-white people.
bass4funk
Good move.
Alfie Noakes
A perfect example of what's known as Imperial boomerang, first described by the writer and politician Aimé Césaire in 1950:
And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind—it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.
— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
plasticmonkey
Why do you hate these people so much?
bass4funk
I hate no one, I hate illegals and visa overstayers, and I have zero sympathy for those people, I don't care what the reason is, my great-grand parents on my mothers side came to the US legally and they had it very bad and under desperate conditions, where they came from, but they came through Ellis island and assimilated as quickly as they could because they were proud to be in the country. Anyone who went through the process and is trying, legally and follows are rules and laws, absolutely, I welcome them happily.
theFu
All of them if they crossed into the USA illegally.
Trump needs to push Congress to pass laws to give teeth to crossing the border illegally. Currently, it is a slap on the wrist when it needs to be a felony with a $20K minimum fine for the first offense.
BTW, I don't like that ICE doesn't release names, locations of all their arrests within 24 hours. That has to be illegal.
I would treat anyone illegally in the USA the same, regardless of origin. Either they can show proof they are in the country legally in a few days or they can show a court date for immigration/asylum or they need to be deported within a few days. I don't care if they are rich, from Europe, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia or poor from South America or China.
Nifty
If you come to our country legally, on the other hand, we will change the law to make it illegal, even if you have been legally waiting for many years for citizenship. We'll probably send the Statue of Liberty back to France before long... who wants the tired or the poor or huddled masses yearning to breathe free? Sound like one of them thar foreign plots...
JeffLee
No country should tolerate people from foreign countries sneaking into the country and then breaking that country's laws. The Japanese certainly don't tolerate it. Why should Americans?
bass4funk
Exactly!
rgw1
Japan historically has had much stricter immigration policies than the USA. The US is just catching up after years of failing to protect its borders.
Aly Rustom
The EU is looking to implement its own version of ICE agents. They are literally taking a page out of Trump's playbook
Underworld
theFu
And how many were criminals? 10%?
And if they didn't?
KnightsOfCydonia
And that is a problem, it is unknown who they have arrested and their track record is far from perfect with no oversight. These guys are running a cowboy operation, raking in the bucks with zero ...
TaiwanIsNotChina
A nun got swept up in the MAGA jollymaking as well.
XCAndtheband
A governmental body run by a white supremacist whose only aim is to get non-white people out of the country. By violent and inhumane means when they really want to savor their evil actions. And they’ll lie and say “oh it’s only about getting undocumented immigrants out.” That’s BS and everyone knows it.
Absolutely disgusting.
I can’t wait until we hold these white supremacist criminals accountable and lock them up.
Blacklabel
Very good news, let’s increase the pace even more.
All illegals need to go based on recent Supreme Court rulings.
Blacklabel
sounds like an irrelevant poem added later that has no connection to the actual laws of our country.