The Trump administration is apprehending a whole bunch of immigrants day-after-day throughout the nation – however there’s a stark cut up in the place Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes these arrests in blue states and red states.
In states that voted for President Donald Trump, ICE brokers are much more more likely to arrest immigrants immediately from prisons and jails, a NCS evaluation of data from the company discovered.
In Democratic-leaning states, in contrast, ICE is often arresting immigrants from worksites, streets and mass roundups which have sparked protests and intense backlash in cities corresponding to Los Angeles. Most of these arrested don’t have any prison report.
The ICE data shows that general, extra immigrants are being arrested in red states than blue states – each in the group and, particularly, in prisons and jails. But there’s a clear divide in the place ICE is apprehending folks: 59% of arrests in red states passed off in prisons and jails, whereas 70% of arrests in blue states passed off in the group. That partisan hole between red and blue states existed earlier than Trump’s second time period started – however it has widened since final yr.
Trump officers say the differing ways are merely a downstream impact of sanctuary insurance policies in many Democratic-controlled states and massive cities, which may restrict prisons and jails from cooperating with ICE. In a lot of these states, native authorities can’t maintain immigrants in custody based mostly on ICE orders alone – so that they’re usually launched earlier than immigration officers can arrest them.
“Sanctuary cities are going to get exactly what they don’t want, more agents in the communities and more worksite enforcement,” Trump border czar Tom Homan advised reporters final month. “Why is that? Because they won’t let one agent arrest one bad guy in a jail.”
But advocates for immigrant rights say the group arrests – from raids at factories and eating places to shock detentions at ICE check-ins – are punitive measures geared toward instilling worry in blue states and cities.
The aggressive ways replicate “a deliberate federal strategy to punish Massachusetts and other immigrant-friendly states for standing up against Trump’s reckless deportation machine,” argued Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the chief director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit that represents immigrants in court docket.
An ICE spokesperson didn’t reply to requests for touch upon NCS’s evaluation.
The divide is particularly dramatic in Massachusetts, the place 94% of immigrants arrested by ICE had been apprehended in the group, and 78% of them had no prison report.
The state has a court docket choice and native insurance policies that restrict regulation enforcement from cooperating with ICE. The company’s regional workplace was additionally led till March by Todd Lyons, who’s now the appearing ICE director, and who has described the give attention to group arrests in Massachusetts, his house state, as a direct response to sanctuary insurance policies.
“If sanctuary cities would change their policies and turn these violent criminal aliens over to us, into our custody, instead of releasing them into the public, we would not have to go out to the communities and do this,” Lyons mentioned at a press convention in June.
Regardless of the trigger, the various native legal guidelines and ICE ways are making a “patchwork system” throughout the nation, mentioned Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and coverage analyst with the Migration Policy Institute.
Immigrants are going through “really divergent outcomes based on where people live,” she mentioned.
NCS’s evaluation is predicated on ICE information obtained by means of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project, a analysis group related to the UC Berkeley regulation faculty. The evaluation covers the interval since Trump took workplace by means of late June.
In its annual reports, ICE defines arrests in two classes: those who occur in prisons and jails, and “at-large” arrests in the group. In prisons and jails, ICE sometimes sends a detainer request to corrections officers for undocumented inmates, and then brokers come to the amenities to arrest them earlier than they go away custody.
Community arrests, in contrast, embody all the things from office raids to groups trailing and apprehending immigrants.
In 2024, below President Joe Biden – whose administration mentioned it was prioritizing arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants with prison information – about 62% of ICE arrests had been from prisons and jails, whereas 27% had been in the group, the data shows.
So far in Trump’s time period, arrests general are up, and the stability has modified: 49% have been in prisons and jails, and 44% in the group.
But these percentages diverge extensively between the 31 states received by Donald Trump and the 19 states received by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, which have comparable whole undocumented populations, in response to 2023 estimates from the Center for Migration Studies, a nonprofit.
In the Trump-voting states, ICE will not be solely extra more likely to arrest immigrants already in custody, however they’re additionally extra more likely to have a report: 41% of these arrested in red states had a previous prison conviction, in comparison with 36% of immigrants arrested by ICE in Harris states. Most prior convictions are for lower-level crimes like visitors offenses, immigration violations and different non-violent expenses, a NCS analysis of inside ICE data discovered earlier this summer time.
In half, that disparity comes from how states and cities with out sanctuary insurance policies reply to ICE detainer requests. In most red states, these detainers are honored, permitting ICE to choose up 1000’s of undocumented immigrants immediately from jail or jail.
But in many blue states and cities, sanctuary insurance policies direct officers to refuse ICE detainer requests and not using a court docket warrant. Some states go additional in limiting native police’s collaboration with ICE: Boston prevents officers from even asking about immigration standing, for instance.
The ICE data means that some sanctuary insurance policies are blocking the company from arresting immigrants – to a degree.
In Mississippi, for instance, which has banned the institution of sanctuary insurance policies in the state, 87% of immigrants ICE filed a detainer request for by means of the top of May had been later arrested by the company in prisons and jails. In New York, which has state and native insurance policies limiting cooperation with ICE, solely 4% of the immigrants that ICE had requested detainers for had been arrested in prisons and jails.
So in blue states, the Trump administration has as a substitute relied extra on a different coverage: immigration raids and group arrests. In Los Angeles, where those raids sparked unrest earlier this summer time, Trump deployed the National Guard. The administration later sued the town for its sanctuary insurance policies, saying the town was contributing to a “lawless and unsafe environment.”
Many activists, although, say the character of these blue-state raids – and particularly ICE’s efforts to advertise and publicize them – present they serve a broader function past simply evading sanctuary insurance policies.
Those aggressive ways are “shocking and they’re such a departure from the norm,” Bush-Joseph mentioned. “But their intent might be more so about deterrence and trying to dissuade people from coming to the US-Mexico border, as well as trying to get people to self-deport.”
Overall, ICE’s arrest and detention machine could be ramping up. The current finances reconciliation invoice signed by Trump consists of billions in new funding for the company. And a rising variety of native and state regulation enforcement companies – largely in red states – are signing up for an ICE program that enables them to assist implement immigration legal guidelines.
ICE’s embrace of public arrests is especially pronounced in Massachusetts.
While Massachusetts doesn’t have a formal sanctuary law on the state stage, a 2017 state supreme court docket ruling bans regulation enforcement from holding anybody past the time they might in any other case be launched on the premise of an ICE detainer request. Boston and a number of different cities even have insurance policies that go additional, stopping regulation enforcement from coordinating with ICE extra broadly.
Lyons, the appearing ICE director, led the Boston ICE workplace – which is answerable for arrests in Massachusetts and 5 different New England states – earlier than being elevated to his present function. In interviews and statements, he’s decried sanctuary insurance policies in the state.
“Boston’s my hometown and it really shocks me that officials all over Massachusetts would rather release sex offenders, fentanyl dealers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and child rapists back into the neighborhoods,” he advised reporters this summer time – with out addressing the truth that a big majority of immigrants arrested in the state this yr had no prison convictions.
In May, ICE carried out what officers described as the biggest enforcement operation in the company’s historical past, arresting greater than 1,400 folks in communities throughout Massachusetts. Around New England, different high-profile instances have included ICE officers detaining a Tufts PhD student who co-wrote a scholar newspaper op-ed essential of Israel and smashing the window of an immigrant’s automotive and yanking him out of the passenger seat in entrance of his spouse.
ICE’s aggressive ways in the area have been outlined by “a general level of mean-spiritedness and brutality,” mentioned Daniel Kanstroom, a Boston College regulation professor who based the faculty’s immigration and asylum regulation clinic. “We’ve never seen masked agents before. We’ve never seen students arrested for writing op-eds before. We’ve never seen people dragged out of immigration court before.”
Stepped-up group arrests are having a marked affect on immigrant-heavy neighborhoods in the Boston space, native advocates say. In suburbs like Chelsea and Everett, which have massive Salvadoran and Central American communities, some immigrants are staying house out of worry of ICE raids.
“We’re seeing people not going to their doctor’s appointments, kids not going to school, folks not going grocery shopping,” mentioned Sarang Sekhavat, the chief of workers on the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition. “You’re seeing a lot of businesses in some of these neighborhoods really suffering because people just don’t want to leave home… bustling, active neighborhoods that have become very quiet now.”
ICE’s dragnet has picked up folks like Geovani Esau De La Cruz Catalan, who was arrested by immigration brokers on the road exterior his Chelsea house in June – simply days after he crossed the stage at his highschool commencement.
The 20-year-old, who has no prison historical past, got here to the US from Guatemala in 2022. He advised NCS his hopes to construct a brand new life in America had been dashed when he was detained.
“I thought they were going to take away all the dreams I had,” De La Cruz mentioned in Spanish. “I was in shock.”
De La Cruz spent two weeks in ICE custody earlier than being launched with a future immigration court docket date. His stepmother, Mayra Balderas, mentioned he has a piece allow, however it’s unclear whether or not he’ll be allowed to remain or deported again to Guatemala.
Balderas, an American citizen who immigrated to the US greater than three a long time in the past, mentioned ICE brokers had been often patrolling her Chelsea neighborhood, one thing she’d by no means seen earlier than Trump took workplace.
“Since I’ve been here, I never have any experience like that – going into the neighborhoods and pulling people and doing what they’re doing,” Balderas mentioned. “They are scaring people.”
Methodology
- NCS analyzed data on ICE arrests and detainers published by the Data Deportation Project, a analysis group related to UC Berkeley regulation faculty. The data consists of administrative arrests, in which immigrants arrested face deportation, not prison arrests for human trafficking or comparable crimes.
- For data that was lacking details about the state the place an immigrant was arrested, when doable, NCS inferred the state based mostly on which ICE subject workplace performed the arrest, utilizing areas of accountability described on the ICE website. A state couldn’t be recognized for about 11% of arrests, and these usually are not included in state-by-state totals.
- Based on info in ICE annual reports and interviews with coverage specialists, NCS outlined arrests in jails and prisons as these with a terror technique described in the data as “CAP Local Incarceration,” “CAP State Incarceration,” or “CAP Federal Incarceration” (referring to ICE’s Criminal Alien Program) and arrests in the group as these listed as “Non-Custodial Arrest,” “Located,” “Worksite Enforcement,” “Traffic Check,” or “Probation and Parole.” About 7% of arrests had been listed as “Other Efforts” or didn’t match clearly into both class.