Arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents dropped nearly 20% in July—and according to Axios, the Trump administration isn’t happy about it.
Data from the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse nonprofit at Syracuse University shows that ICE made an average of 990 arrests per day between July 1 and July 27. That’s down from 1,224 daily arrests in June and nowhere near the 3,000 daily goal once floated by senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller. (That benchmark, notably, hasn’t appeared in any court filings.)
The drop followed a wave of backlash after masked ICE agents carried out aggressive raids in Los Angeles, where protests erupted and spread across the country, prompting court orders that have since curtailed ICE’s tactics. Just last week, a federal appeals court upheld a ruling blocking many of the agency’s operations in Southern California.
The Department of Homeland Security is trying to downplay the dip. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told Axios that arrests were only down 10%, from 31,000 in June to 27,000 in July.
“Despite a historic number of injunctions—including the [temporary restraining order] in Los Angeles—ICE continues to arrest the worst of the worst,” McLaughlin said. “From gang members and terrorists to pedophiles, every day ICE is removing these barbaric criminal illegal aliens from American communities. Secretary [Kristi] Noem has been clear: Nothing will stop us from carrying out the president and American people’s mandate to carry out the largest deportation of criminal illegal aliens in American history.”
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But the numbers suggest something else entirely. As of late July, TRAC reported that about 71% of those currently in ICE custody have no criminal convictions. And among those who do, many were for minor offenses like traffic violations.
While the Trump administration insists that it’s targeting violent criminals, critics say that the sweeps of low-level offenders are sowing fear in immigrant communities.
The backlash isn’t the only factor behind the drop. Trump’s flip-flopping—particularly over whether to pause raids of undocumented workers in the agriculture and hospitality industries—has led to internal confusion and further slowed ICE operations.
And the fallout from those June raids still looms large. Families were separated. Immigrants fled worksites, leaving behind cars, children, and pets. And U.S. citizens—many of them Latino—reported being wrongly detained in what advocates call racial profiling and overpolicing.
A coalition of immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration last month for deliberately targeting brown people in Southern California.
Meanwhile, deportations have ticked upward, with July removals increasing by an average of 84 per day compared to June. NBC News previously found that more than 18,000 immigrants were deported in June alone.
The number of people currently in ICE custody has dipped slightly, from 57,861 on June 29 to 56,945 as of July 27, according to TRAC.
In court, the Trump administration maintains that it isn’t setting quotas, and a Justice Department lawyer told the 9th Circuit Court last week that ICE leadership hasn’t been ordered to meet any specific arrest target.
Still, the increased raids that began in June have already left a mark: mass protests, legal setbacks, and mounting criticism from civil rights groups. ICE is even offering new recruits student loan forgiveness and signing bonuses in a bid to keep up operations.
The Trump team may claim that ICE is focused on the “worst of the worst.” But the truth is clear: The administration is sweeping up families, workers, and innocent people—and the political blowback is only growing.