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The arrests of immigrants increased elevenfold during the first year of the second term of President Donald Trump, which translates to a rise of over 1,000%, according to a new analysis by the UC Berkeley Deportation Data Project published this Friday.
The study compares the last six months of Joe Biden's administration with the data available until March 2026 and rates the phenomenon as a novel occurrence in the history of immigration law enforcement in the United States.
The analysis covers the arrests made in public spaces, including those carried out in immigration courts, neighborhoods, and local offices of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In parallel, the detentions of immigrants without a criminal record increased by 770% during the same period, according to the Berkeley report.
The percentage of detainees with a criminal record dropped from the 72% recorded in fiscal year 2024 to 60% in the most recent period, indicating that ICE significantly broadened its scope to include individuals without a criminal history.
This information is consistent with an internal document from the Department of Homeland Security obtained by CBS News, which indicates that between January 21, 2025, and January 31, 2026, ICE made approximately 392,619 arrests, of which less than 14% had charges or convictions for violent crimes.
Detentions originating from jails and prisons—which represented the majority of ICE arrests before 2025—nearly doubled during the first year of Trump's second term.
The increase in arrests translated into an even larger rise in the number of deportations: five times more than in the previous period. The Trump administration more than quadrupled —4.5 times— the number of detention beds designated for people arrested within the country.
The rate of deportations carried out within two months of detention doubled, increasing from 27% to 57%, while release during the same period —a common practice for individuals without prior records during the Biden administration— became an exceptional occurrence, happening in only 7% of cases.
The report indicates that voluntary departures and returns increased 28-fold, suggesting that many migrants chose to abandon their cases due to the tightening of the system: "Perhaps… many more people chose to abandon their cases: voluntary departures and returns (which are rare compared to expulsions) increased 28-fold," the report warns.
The analysis also noted that a slight decrease in operations during February and early March 2026, following the murders of American citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis during ICE operations, barely disrupted the overall patterns of the deportation campaign.
The Trump administration rejected the conclusions of the report. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security stated to NBC News that 70% of ICE arrests involve immigrants with criminal records and that the agency targets "the worst of the worst," adding that "all those arrested committed a federal crime by entering the country illegally." ICE, for its part, declined to comment on "unverified data" from third parties and accused the University of California at Berkeley of presenting "only the data that interests them" and promoting "a false narrative."
The Deportation Data Project highlighted that its analysis uses primary ICE records obtained through lawsuits, with a completely transparent methodology, and that the data contradicts the official narrative of focusing on the most serious cases.
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