ICE Arrests 10,000 in Five Days As Trump Administration Ramps Up Deportation Crackdown

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 10,000 people over a five-day period at the end of June, according to a person familiar with the data who was not authorized to discuss it publicly, marking a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.

The surge marks nearly double the daily arrest pace recorded in January, when the administration’s most visible operations were concentrated in Minneapolis, and follows a February dip to just over 1,000 arrests a day after leadership changes at the Department of Homeland Security. The renewed pace suggests enforcement activity is intensifying even without the widely publicized street operations that drew scrutiny earlier this year, raising questions about where the arrests are occurring and how the numbers will be independently verified once ICE’s own data is released.

What the Numbers Show

The five-day arrest total covers the period starting Friday and ending Tuesday in late June, though it was not clear where the arrests took place. ICE does not publicly release arrest data, making direct comparisons with earlier periods difficult. The figures cited come from a person familiar with internal numbers that have not yet been made public, a departure from the more detailed disclosures the agency provided during its earlier city-based operations.

For comparison, arrests averaged about 1,212 a day in January, when hundreds of immigration enforcement officers were deployed to Minneapolis and surrounding areas. That operation became a turning point in the administration’s enforcement strategy after two American citizens were killed by immigration officers while protesting the crackdown, according to prior AP reporting. Then-Border Czar Tom Homan subsequently began drawing down officer numbers in Minnesota as the agency stepped back from the large-scale surge operations that had defined the tenure of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose operations under then-Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino frequently drew clashes with protesters.

By February, daily arrests had fallen to 1,057, according to figures from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, which obtained the data through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and says its figures are current only through that month. Noem’s successor at Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, signaled at the time that he intended to keep the department out of the headlines with a lower-profile approach to enforcement, though he was expected to continue pursuing the administration’s overall immigration priorities.

Detention Numbers Also Climbing

The arrest surge coincides with a rise in ICE detention numbers, which climbed to roughly 39,000 in June after holding around 30,000 a month since February. The increase in both arrests and detentions suggests enforcement activity has accelerated even as the agency’s public-facing operations have become less visible than during the Minneapolis deployment.

The Department of Homeland Security defended its enforcement record in a statement, saying it has been “arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens” since the start of the administration, and warning that anyone in the country illegally “will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you.”

The shift from highly visible, city-targeted operations to a quieter enforcement model represents a notable strategic change for the agency. Under Noem and Bovino, ICE operations were marked by frequent public clashes between officers and protesters, footage of which was often shared across the department’s own social media channels. The Minneapolis deployment and the deaths of two American citizens during related protests appear to have prompted the administration to recalibrate, favoring dispersed, lower-visibility arrests over concentrated citywide sweeps.

What Remains Unclear

Since ICE does not release arrest data publicly, the current figures rely on unnamed sourcing and cannot yet be independently verified against official agency records. It also remains unclear where the late-June arrests took place or how many of those detained had prior criminal records, a detail the Deportation Data Project’s FOIA-obtained figures have historically been able to clarify once released.

Whether the elevated pace continues into July, and whether ICE will release its own figures to confirm or dispute the reported total, remains unclear.