New ICE arrest data show the power of state and local governments to curtail mass deportations
(Co-authored with Brian Nam-Sonenstein for the Prison Policy Initiative)
Using fresh data on ICE arrests through mid-October from the Deportation Data Project, we examine how jails continue to facilitate mass deportation, spotlighting important opportunities for resistance at the state and local levels.
Local jails and police departments are key to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ICE arrests of people who are already in police custody. In the first year of Trump’s second term, the administration has intensified the criminalization of asylum seekers and immigrants, pushed immigrant detention to all-time highs, and indiscriminately raided city after city. Despite all of this, the Trump administration remains well behind their mass deportation goals, in large part due to state and local efforts to protect immigrant communities and limit cooperation with ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies.
In this briefing, we provide an update to our July 2025 report, Hiding in Plain Sight, which explored how local jails obscure and facilitate mass deportation under Trump. Using new government data provided by ICE and processed by the Deportation Data Project, we found high levels of ICE arrests — over 1,000 a day — concentrated in states that fully collaborate with the Trump administration. Nearly half (48%) of these arrests happen out of local jails and other lock-ups. We also provide updated data tables showing both the numbers and rates of ICE arrests by state.