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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a record number of people over the past month as Donald Trump doubles down on his hardline enforcement crackdown, despite public opposition to his policies.
A record 43,138 people — an average of nearly 1,400 a day — were sent to ICE detention centres in June according to the agency’s own data; July is set to surpass that record, on pace for nearly 50,000 so-called “book-ins” by the end of the month.
The surge has coincided with an uptick in aggressive and sometimes deadly tactics, with ICE agents killing two people in recent weeks, leaving the agency caught between the president’s demands and mounting public outrage as November’s midterm elections loom.
“There’s only one solution to this problem for ICE,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “And that is to stop playing the numbers game.”
Trump’s immigration surge reached a tipping point earlier this year, when federal immigration officers in Minnesota shot and killed two US citizens: Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse.
Outrage at the killings, which were caught on video, quickly spread across the nation, and Kristi Noem, Trump’s controversial homeland security secretary who had spearheaded ICE’s heavy-handed tactics, was fired and replaced by Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin.
During his confirmation hearing in March, Mullin said his “goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day”.
The agency shifted tactics, picking up immigrants in lower-profile settings, such as courts or at traffic stops instead of provoking protests by carrying out high-profile mass sweeps.
In one sense, Trump’s push to stop illegal immigration has been a victim of its own success. John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE, said the agency was “completely overwhelmed by the border” in 2024, but since Trump took over, those numbers have dropped “next to zero”.
Without this “low-hanging fruit”, the agency has turned away from border enforcement to rooting out undocumented immigrants and criminals to meet demands for higher numbers.
The dragnet is catching many law-abiding non-citizens. Some 40 per cent of book-ins since October last year were neither convicted criminals nor facing pending charges, the data shows.
The two men recently killed by ICE agents — Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant in Houston, and Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a Colombian man killed in Maine — were fatally shot as the agents attempted to stop their vehicles.
In the wake of those incidents, Mullin suspended the use of traffic stops to arrest immigrants. But Trump reversed his directive, saying that it would be “playing right into the criminals’ hands”.
“I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job,” Trump said in a social media post last week. “Keep those Crime Stat Records coming!”
The episode underscored the conflict between Trump’s immigration push and ICE’s efforts to avoid controversy while still delivering on the president’s directives.
“They’re undercut by the president,” Sandweg said. “It puts them in a very difficult spot.”
A recent FT poll shows Americans are sharply divided on Trump’s immigration agenda. Some 44 per cent of registered voters disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration, while a similar share approve.
Attitudes towards the crackdown had become less negative in recent months as Mullin kept the agency out of the headlines and outrage over last winter’s killings faded.
Back in March, some 62 per cent of registered voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration but by June, before the latest shootings, the proportions who approved and disapproved were roughly even. The president’s standing on the issue remains one of his strongest with voters, even as his overall approval ratings have plummeted to new lows in recent months.
But an Economist/YouGov poll this week found that the recent shootings by ICE may have increased support for abolishing the agency, with 58 per cent of Americans who had heard about the killings somewhat or strongly supporting the dismantling of the agency.
Mullin now faces the challenge of returning to low-key enforcement to avoid more public outrage. The administration’s strategy ahead of the midterm elections in November is to stay out of the headlines while meeting deportation targets, said Gil Kerlikowske, a former CBP commissioner.
“It’s not because they want to change. It’s not because they don’t want the numbers. It’s because they’re worried about the midterm elections,” he said.
Data visualisation by Nolan Shaffer, Ian Hodgson and Michael Taffe
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