The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested nearly 75,000 undocumented immigrants with no criminal records in the first nine months of President Donald Trump‘s second term.
This comprised over one-third of 222,000 total arrests, as per data obtained by UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.
ICE deported nearly 200,000 people in the first seven months of Trump’s second term, with total removals reaching around 350,000 when including CBP and Coast Guard actions plus 17,500 self-deportations.
Arrest breakdown
An average of 824 arrests were made every day, far below the administration’s internal 3,000-per-day goal, according to several reports. The data does not include arrest figures covering those detained by the Border Patrol, which has taken an increasingly prominent role under Trump leading deportation crackdowns in cities across the country, though other analyses suggest similar trends.
During a recent operation in Charlotte, North Carolina, fewer than one-third of those the Border Patrol arrested were already classified as criminals, according to internal Homeland Security documents obtained by CBS News.
As of mid-November, about 73 per cent of the roughly 65,000 people in immigration detention after being arrested by ICE and the Border Patrol had no previous criminal conviction, and most of those with convictions were for minor offenses like traffic violations, according to the TRAC immigration database.
Contradictions and impact
Trump had pledged focus on “worst of the worst” criminals, yet data shows most arrests target civil immigration violators. In the course of chasing the Trump administration’s goals of a record number of arrests and deportations, immigration officials have detained scores of American citizens, including children, and agents have been accused of random sweeps using racial profiling to target Latinos, The Independent reported.
ICE gets a bigger budget
Trump’s administration is ramping up immigration enforcement with a huge cash boost from the Big Beautiful Bill signed into law in July. This law gives about $170 billion over four years to ICE and Border Patrol, the biggest funding ever for border security and deportations.
This triples ICE’s yearly budget from around $8 billion, CBS News had earlier reported.
