The Trump administration arrested and deported a record number of immigrants in July, according to newly released government data – apprehending an average of 1,500 people and removing 1,100 people daily. This latest data confirms what attorneys and immigrant advocates have been seeing across the US – although the administration has moved away from the high-profile, militarized raids that came to define its immigration enforcement approach last year, it is quietly ramping up its operations. Despite the administration’s insistence that it is targeting criminals, a record number of people caught in the surge of arrests in July had no prior criminal history.
July was the first month during the second Trump administration that the majority of people – 51% of arrestees — had no criminal convictions or charges, according to the Guardian’s analysis. Removals were also at a record high in July. Nearly 34,000 people were removed from the US last month, the most since the start of the second Trump administration.
Boosted by a $70bn funding surge, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – the agency that oversees ICE and the border patrol – has been working to ramp up to the White House goal of 2,000 arrests every day. Immigrants are being arrested when they report to mandated appointments at ICE offices, at traffic stops, outside their homes and, increasingly, at US airports. Attorneys are also advising clients with temporary protective status (TPS) to make sure they apply for different forms of immigration relief after the supreme court cleared the way for the administration to strip the designation from 50,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians.
In the past month, the administration has been particularly focused on enforcement in the Springfield, Ohio, area, where a large group of Haitians with TPS had settled in recent years. Advocacy groups in Springfield said that Haitians were being called in to ICE offices and fitted with ankle monitors. The first deportation flight to Haiti since the supreme court decision landed last week.
TPS for Salvadorans is set to expire in September – ending protections for 170,000 people. Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary, called the program “the greatest partnership we can have” – and said it was a key part of his goal to conduct enforcement in a “more quiet way”. Attorneys and advocates told the Guardian that these sorts of immigration arrests can go unnoticed in many communities, because it can be difficult for passersby to discern whether a local police officer is making a routine traffic stop or an immigration apprehension.
Volunteer groups that, amid the militarized raids last winter, had trained to document ICE arrests and take down details to help locate those in detention later are now recalibrating how to track enforcement in their cities and provide assistance.
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