The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested nearly 49,600 people during July, the highest monthly figure recorded in the second Trump Administration, according to official data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and analyzed by The Associated Press. The data confirms that the White House’s mass deportation agenda continues to advance, albeit with a change in strategy: from high-profile operations in large cities — which sparked protests and extensive media coverage earlier this year — to more dispersed and less visible arrests, but equally disruptive to immigrant communities.
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The upward trend had already clearly accelerated between May and June, one of the largest month-to-month increases recorded. Now, July arrests represent a 15% increase compared to the 43,021 recorded in June; and a 70% jump compared to the 29,241 in February, a month marked by a rollback in operations following the Minnesota offensive that resulted in the deaths of citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of immigration agents.
Going even further back, the month before Trump took office, ICE arrests barely exceeded 8,000, mostly composed of migrants transferred from state or local jails. During the first year of the current administration, the number rose as the Administration relaxed restrictions on where and whom ICE could arrest, while injecting billions of additional dollars into the agency. By December, arrests already exceeded 40,000 monthly.
That pace slowed in February, following protests and criticism from Democratic lawmakers after the events in Minnesota. After the leadership change at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where Markwayne Mullin replaced Kristi Noem as secretary, arrests remained relatively stable, between 30,000 and 32,000 monthly, until June and July when they surged again to record levels.
Behind the record volume of arrests, it is also striking who is being detained. More than half of the people arrested in July had no criminal record, no convictions, nor pending charges. In June, that proportion had already reached 47%, the highest in the entire Administration up to that point. This trend directly contradicts Mullin’s statements, who in a statement on August 10 said that ICE works to remove “killers” and other “public safety threats” from communities.
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The surge is the result of several factors, according to analysts who have reviewed the data. On one hand, ICE has intensified arrests during routine traffic stops and has increasingly relied on state and local law enforcement, which in many places already act as an extension of federal immigration law enforcement through so-called 287(g) agreements. The fact that Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of July’s arrests — about 40% of the national total — reflects the weight of both states, with governments aligned with the White House, in the mass deportation strategy. Both maintain especially extensive 287(g) agreements.
On the other hand, the agency has begun detaining people of Haitian origin after the government withdrew protections that shielded more than 300,000 from deportation.
When Mullin took office following Noem’s departure in March, he promised during his confirmation hearing to keep ICE out of the headlines, suggesting a possible shift toward a less confrontational approach. Although his tenure has been marked by several fatal shootings of agents against migrants, both in July, the record number of detentions indicates that this time there will be no slowdown like in February.
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