Related videos:
The Miami Sector of the Border Patrol has become, for the first time in history, one of the main hotspots for immigration arrests in the United States, rivaling the traditional border sectors of Texas, Arizona, and California, according to exclusive data from the Washington Examiner based on figures from the Customs and Border Protection Office.
Between March 2025 and April 2026, the Miami Sector recorded 12,599 immigrant arrests, 10% of the national total of 125,199 apprehensions during that 14-month period.
The engine behind this surge is not the illegal crossings along the coast, but rather the cooperation among federal, state, and local agencies under the 287(g) agreement of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows local and state police to act as immigration agents.
The governor Ron DeSantis ordered the Florida Highway Patrol, municipal police, and sheriff’s departments to assist federal immigration authorities, creating a chain of individuals entering the custody of Border Patrol.
The spokesperson for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Madison Kessler, confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the Florida Highway Patrol "has arrested more than 10,690 illegal immigrants, including over 2,140 with criminal records" since March 2025.
Between August 1, 2025, and this week, Florida's state and local agencies identified 26,200 immigrants in an irregular situation, of which 21,240 led to arrests.
The ICE office in Miami leads immigration raids with an average of 120 arrests daily, accumulating 41,310 detentions from January 2025 to April 2026, a figure that surpasses the second most active office in the country, in Dallas, by 36%.
Florida accounts for 43% of all 287(g) agreements in the country, with 295 participating agencies, making it the state with the largest immigration cooperation infrastructure in the nation.
In April 2025, DeSantis launched "Operation Tidal Wave" in coordination with ICE, described as the largest joint immigration enforcement operation in the agency's history. By January 2026, the operation had produced over 10,400 arrests in eight months.
The impact has reached the Cuban community in Miami, historically aligned with Republican policies. The arrests by ICE of Cuban citizens increased by 463% between late 2024 and early 2026, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute cited by the Miami Herald.
Since the beginning of Trump's second term until April 2026, 1,992 Cubans were deported to Cuba, through regular flights that include cases of individuals with and without criminal records.
Florida also offers immigrants in federal custody the option to self-deport with a free one-way plane ticket to their country of origin, a measure that the state promotes as an alternative to prolonged detention.
In the first five months of 2026, 612 Cubans were deported to the island, and a Cuban resident in Miami was detained this week due to his family's fear that he might be expelled from the country along with his wife and children.
Filed under: