US immigration officials arrested, detained and deported tens of thousands of people in operations nationwide during the federal government shutdown, new data reveals.
The arrests have led to a marked increase in the number of people held in immigration jails, with more than 65,000 currently detained nationwide – the highest number of people in immigration detention ever.
While other federal employees were furloughed and without pay and many public services were limited or unavailable, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kept up enforcement operations nationwide, in line with the Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda. This included detaining thousands of people with no criminal record.
In total, ICE arrested and detained approximately 54,000 people and deported approximately 56,000 people during the shutdown.
The latest data covers 1 October through 15 November, the entire period of the government shutdown, which ended on 12 November, plus an additional three days. Thursday evening’s release of the official statistics is the first time since September that ICE has published data on ongoing arrests and detentions.
The Guardian, using ICE’s data, has continued to track the number of people arrested, detained and deported by the agency.
During the shutdown, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), repeatedly claimed that immigration enforcement officers were arresting the “worst of the worst”. But ICE’s latest data shows that more than 21,000 people with no criminal record were arrested and detained by ICE, with the number again surpassing those who have been convicted of a crime or with pending criminal charges.
Immigrants with no criminal record continue to be the largest group in US immigration detention. Being undocumented in the US is not a crime; it is a civil infraction.
The 65,000 people detained by ICE in various facilities, including many run by private-sector contractors, is the “highest number of detainees, at least since the start of our modern era of immigration detention from the 1980s”, said Adam Sawyer, director of research at Relevant Research, a group of academics and researchers who work on immigration data.
During the first week of Donald Trump’s second term, in January of this year, there were 950 people in immigration detention who were arrested by ICE with no criminal history, according to past ICE data collected by the Guardian.
But the latest data shows a 2,131% jump, from 950 to nearly 22,000.
ICE has arrested and detained more than 16,000 people with criminal backgrounds and nearly 15,300 people with pending charges, the latest data shows.
“This coincides with the Trump administration’s enforcement hysteria in Chicago, which Trump justified as needed to catch dangerous ‘illegal’ criminals,” wrote Austin Kocher, an assistant research professor at Syracuse University, about the latest data release.
Kocher analyzes ICE numbers, tracking arrests and detention statistics. The latest data calls into question Trump’s “outrageous and inflammatory claims”, he added.
Earlier this year, top DHS officials directed ICE to arrest at least 3,000 people each day, or a million per year. In leaked emails obtained by the Guardian, ICE officials were instructed to also arrest “collaterals”, the agency’s word for people who just happen to be present during an arrest operation, without arrest warrants.
The administration has significantly changed the way immigration enforcement is being conducted as well, as ICE works with a colossal surge in funding. Massive immigration enforcement operations have targeted major cities across the US, as other federal agencies are ordered to assist in immigration arrests. A growing number of local officials have also being deputized to conduct immigration enforcement work in collaboration with ICE.
Previously, other agencies within the DHS played a bigger role in immigration-related arrests at the US-Mexico border. But with Trump’s return to the White House, further restrictions along the border have led to a decrease in the number of arrests by border officials. Now those same border officials, including border patrol agents, have been deployed to the interior of the US to assist ICE in its arrest efforts.
With ICE’s outsized budget, and the increase of arrest operations nationwide, immigration officials have also arrested people with legal status, including citizens.
The Trump administration has engaged in massive operations in major US cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina.
