During the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to apprehend and deport millions of people during his administration, including one million per year, but according to Department of Homeland Security officials, the numbers are still far off, with nearly 579,000 individuals arrested by DHS since Jan. 20, when Trump took office.
In order to speed up Trump's mass deportation plan, Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller pushed immigration agencies to increase the daily arrest quota from 1,000 to 3,000 people in May. Ever since the quota was increased, federal immigration agents and other law enforcement partners have been arresting roughly 1,100 people per day in recent weeks, compared to less than 850 per day between Jan. 20 and Oct. 15.
According to government data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project and reported by Axios, most arrests are being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, specifically Enforcement and Removal Operations agents.
To hit Trump's arrest target, the report revealed that other agencies have assisted ICE, including Border Patrol, the Secret Service within DHS, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Partnerships between ICE and local law enforcement have also contributed to the surge, Axios reports.
Although arrests have increased, DHS has offered little transparency on the actual numbers and has not released immigration enforcement data since Trump began his second term.
According to Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson who spoke to Axios on Dec. 3, DHS has arrested nearly 579,000 people and the daily average has climbed to about 1,800 in recent weeks. She did not respond when asked which DHS subagencies were included in that total.
One of the most contentious issues in immigration enforcement has been the sharp rise in arrests of people with no criminal records. A November investigation by CBS News found that the number of detainees without criminal records has increased more than 2,000% since the start of Trump's second term.
ICE's public database, released as part of a transparency requirement mandated by Congress, shows the agency held 65,135 people in detention facilities nationwide, the highest number ever publicly reported.
The data also shows that nearly half of all detainees in custody as of Nov. 16 had no criminal charges or convictions in the United States. They were being held for civil violations of immigration law, including unauthorized entry or overstaying a visa.
ICE reported holding almost 31,000 people with no criminal charges, compared with more than 34,000 who had either a conviction or a pending charge, though the agency did not specify the seriousness or nature of those offenses.
According to the CBS report, arrests of people with no criminal convictions or charges have surged throughout the year. Between Jan. 26 and Nov. 16, such arrests rose 2,143%, underscoring that many of those targeted under the administration's hardline approach are undocumented immigrants with no criminal history.
"The new data confirms that the Trump administration isn't focused on legitimate public safety risks, but rather on hitting politically motivated arrest targets," Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told Axios. "DHS is sweeping up families and workers with clean records and arresting people who are complying with their obligations to attend court hearings and check-ins," Reichlin-Melnick said.
Originally published on Latin Times
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