US President Donald Trump’s renewed push to carry out mass deportations has led to a sharp increase in immigration arrests, with nearly 23,000 people detained and 18,000 deported last month, US federal data shows.
While arrests inside the US have increased significantly compared with former president Joe Biden's time in office, they remain below the levels recorded at the start of Mr Trump’s first term.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported 20,000 arrests during Mr Trump’s first month back in office. That aligns with figures from TRAC Immigration.
It marks a substantial increase from early 2024, when ICE averaged fewer than 10,000 monthly arrests under Mr Biden. But deportation figures tell a different story – the Trump administration removed 37,660 people in its first month, far fewer than the monthly average of 57,000 recorded during Mr Biden’s last year in the White House.
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was among those arrested under the Trump administration. His detention sent shockwaves through US civil society because of its ramifications for immigration and free speech.
Mr Khalil, a former graduate student at Columbia University, has a green card, which affords him the same work and free speech rights as US citizens. Green card holders can typically only be stripped of their status if they are convicted of a crime, and Mr Khalil has not been accused of any.
However, Mr Trump described him as a “radical foreign pro-Hamas student” on his Truth Social platform and said his arrest was the “first arrest of many to come”.
Figures show there has been an increase in people with no criminal record being arrested by ICE, rising from 6 per cent to 16 per cent in mid-January.
The Department of Homeland Security claimed this month that arrests have risen by 600 per cent, but that figure is misleading. It compares the broad actions of ICE under Mr Trump with a narrower subset of arrests under Mr Biden. Still, the data confirms an overall increase in immigration enforcement activity during Mr Trump’s second term.
Despite the surge in arrests, deportation efforts have faced obstacles. The White House is frustrated with the slow progress, leading to leadership changes at ICE. High costs have also forced the Trump administration to halt the use of military aircraft for deportations, with some flights costing millions of dollars.
While Mr Trump has made policy changes to accelerate removals, it appears increasingly unlikely that he will reach his stated goal of one million deportations a year.
His government’s strategy has curbed the number of migrants entering the US and presenting themselves to immigration courts, which has also had an effect on reducing deportations.
The coming months will reveal whether the Trump administration can sustain this push but, for now, the data shows a stark contrast – arrests are up, but deportations have yet to match the levels recorded under Mr Biden.
