Immigration street arrests increased eleven-fold during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, equating to an increase of more than 1,000%, according to a new analysis by the University of California Berkeley.
The California university’s Deportation Data Project called the magnitude of the increase in street arrests, which includes those made at immigration courts and local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices, “a novel phenomenon.”
Immigration street arrests increase 1000 %
The analysis, which compares the last six months of the Joe Biden Administration (2021-2025) with data as of March 2026, also found that ICE detainers for transferring inmates from jails and prisons to its custody-which prior to 2025 accounted for the majority of the agency’s detainers-nearly doubled in the last year.
The report notes that the likelihood of ICE targeting individuals with criminal records was significantly reduced.
These changes resulted in a more than eight-fold increase in the number of arrests of people with no criminal record.
The research found that detentions of immigrants without criminal records by party have increased by 770% in Trump’s second term.
Deportations also increase
The increase in detentions resulted in an even greater increase (5 times) in the number of deportations, due to an increase in the capacity of detention centers and a reduction in the number of releases.
The Trump Administration more than quadrupled (4.5 times) the number of detention beds designated for persons arrested inside U.S. territory.
In addition, release within 60 days of arrest – a common practice for people with no criminal record during the Biden Administration – became an exceptional occurrence (7%).
The rate of deportations executed within two months of arrest doubled from 27% to 57%.
The decline in the release rate was responsible for most of the increase in deportations. “Perhaps…many more people chose to drop their cases: voluntary departures and returns (which are infrequent compared to removals) increased 28-fold,” the report warns.
The analysis warned that the slight decrease in immigration operations during February and early March 2026, following the murders of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, hardly altered the patterns of the White House’s aggressive deportation campaign.
Filed under: Immigrant arrests on public roads
With information from EFE
