U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested nearly 50,000 people in July, the highest single-month arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures.
The spike in immigration arrests shows that the administration has continued to advance its mass-deportation agenda despite a shift in approach earlier this year—from high-profile operations in large American cities that sparked public outcry to arrests that have garnered less attention but have nonetheless been disruptive.
The July arrest tally of 49,571 marked a 15% increase from the 43,021 arrests recorded a month earlier and a 70% increase from the 29,241 arrests reported in February, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. The government data was provided by ICE to the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press.
The month before Trump entered office, immigration arrests hovered at just over 8,000. That figure largely consisted of immigrants transferred from city or state jails and prisons and turned over to ICE for removal from the country.
During Trump’s first year in office, the numbers began climbing as the administration loosened restrictions on where and whom ICE could arrest while also infusing the agency with billions of dollars in additional funding.
By December, the number of arrests had climbed to more than 40,177, according to the data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Following two fatal shootings in Minnesota in January that sparked protests and an uproar among Democratic lawmakers, arrests began to fall, reaching nearly 30,000 in February. After remaining relatively stagnant for several months, the number of people arrested jumped to more than 43,000 in June and then to roughly 49,500 in July.
During his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pledged to keep ICE out of the headlines, suggesting that the administration’s immigration crackdown might take a less high-profile approach.
But his tenure has been marked by a number of fatal shootings involving immigrants during encounters with ICE officers. The figures also show that Mullin has not shifted the agency away from President Donald Trump’s vision for mass deportations.
Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, underscoring how important those states have become to the Trump administration’s mass-deportation agenda.
Both states have leaned heavily into cooperation agreements with ICE known as 287(g) agreements, which allow local and state law enforcement agencies to perform certain federal immigration-enforcement functions.
The spike in arrests comes as the agency, which was infused with billions of dollars in funding by Congress last summer, has also hired 12,000 new deportation officers and investigative agents.
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