ICE arrests surge nationwide as criminal conviction rate falls

Federal immigration officers have arrested more than 10,000 people in five days, pushing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to a pace that has reached a decade high. The arrests have spread through neighborhoods, worksites and immigration courts, and immigrant communities have responded by pulling back from schools, churches and other daily routines.

University of Colorado Boulder research found ICE arrested more people per day in 2025 than at any time in the past decade, while the share of arrests involving someone with a criminal conviction fell to a near-historic low.

During the first nine months of the current crackdown, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project found deportations from within the United States rose 4.6-fold. ICE arrests quadrupled over the same period, street arrests increased by more than 11-fold and arrests of people without criminal convictions rose sevenfold. Berkeley Law’s summary of the findings showed releases within 60 days of arrest fell from 16% in the last six months of the Biden administration to 3% under Trump.

Enforcement and Removal Operations officers enforce immigration laws in the interior of the United States and use targeted, intelligence-driven operations to prioritize enforcement actions. ICE’s public statistics dashboards are updated quarterly and the data are locked at the end of the fiscal year, which leaves a lag between arrests on the ground and the numbers visible to the public.

A Reuters analysis in 2025 found the national daily ICE arrest rate had doubled compared with the previous decade, and by early 2026 the average was more than 1,000 arrests per day, nearly twice the pace seen at a roughly similar point the year before.

Immigrant advocates and researchers have cited a 3,000-arrests-per-day target, though the White House has denied that any formal quota exists.