Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have increased by a factor of 4.4 compared to the final months of the Biden administration, with interior deportations rising by a factor of five over the first year of President Trump’s second term, according to the most comprehensive data analysis yet produced of the administration’s immigration enforcement surge.
The findings, published by the Deportation Data Project using individual-level data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, represent the most detailed statistical picture available of what the Trump administration has accomplished in its stated mission to restore interior immigration enforcement to a scale that was functionally nonexistent under his predecessor.
The data covers the period from the middle of the Biden administration through March 10, 2026, providing a direct comparison between Biden-era enforcement levels in the final six months of that administration and the peak enforcement period of Trump’s second term, which the data identifies as January 2026.
The comparison is not between the best of one and the worst of the other. It is between the final months of Biden’s presidency and the period during which Trump’s ICE was operating at full strength. The 4.4-fold increase in arrests is the result of that comparison.
ICE street arrests, which include arrests in neighborhoods, at immigration court appearances, and during regular ICE check-ins that had previously been used as catch-and-release mechanisms rather than enforcement opportunities, went up by a factor of eleven.
That figure is not a rounding error and it is not a statistical artifact. Eleven times more street arrests than occurred under the Biden administration in the final period of that administration’s tenure reflects a fundamental transformation of how interior immigration enforcement is conducted in the United States.
Interior deportations, which the Deportation Data Project defines as deportations following ICE arrest rather than deportations following border apprehension, increased by a factor of five over the first year of the second Trump administration. The distinction between interior deportations and border deportations is significant because interior enforcement is the mechanism that reaches the population of illegal aliens who have been living in the United States for extended periods, often years or decades, rather than those apprehended immediately at the border. The fivefold increase in interior deportations means that the Trump administration is reaching a population that Biden-era enforcement largely left untouched.
The mechanism by which the fivefold increase in interior deportations was achieved combines the 4.4-fold increase in arrests with a dramatic change in detention and release policy. Under the Biden administration, ICE commonly released individuals from detention within 60 days of arrest, particularly those without criminal convictions. The release rate for individuals without criminal convictions within 60 days of arrest was 35 percent under Biden. Under Trump, that figure has fallen to 7 percent. The decline in releases means that arrests are far more likely to result in deportations than they were under the prior administration.
The rate of deportation within two months of arrest doubled for individuals without criminal convictions, rising from 27 percent under Biden to 57 percent under Trump. That doubling reflects both the lower release rate and the accelerated processing of removal cases that the administration has prioritized through its use of expedited removal procedures, administrative immigration courts, and the detention-to-deportation pipeline that has been built out over the course of the past year.
Voluntary departures and returns, which are rare compared to formal removals, increased by 28 times over the Biden baseline. That extraordinary figure reflects a rational calculation by individuals in the country illegally who, confronted with an enforcement environment dramatically more hostile to their continued presence than what existed under Biden, are choosing to leave voluntarily rather than face the formal removal process and its associated legal consequences, including bars on future legal entry.
The 4.4-fold increase in overall ICE arrests resulted from a combination of enforcement priorities that distinguish Trump’s approach from Biden’s in fundamental ways. Under Biden, 72 percent of ICE arrests involved individuals with criminal histories. Under Trump’s first year, that figure fell to approximately 60 percent. The decline reflects the administration’s deliberate decision to expand ICE’s enforcement target population beyond the criminal alien category that Biden used as the practical limit of interior enforcement, to include individuals who are present in the country illegally regardless of whether they have a criminal record.
The ICE street arrest figure of eleven times the Biden baseline reflects this expanded enforcement posture most dramatically. Under Biden, street arrests were rare and were generally reserved for individuals with serious criminal records who could not be transferred from criminal custody. Under Trump, street arrests have been used broadly as a primary enforcement mechanism, with agents conducting enforcement operations in neighborhoods, at workplaces, and at other locations where illegal aliens are present. This approach, characterized by critics as indiscriminate and by supporters as the only way to reach individuals who are not passing through the criminal justice system, has produced the eleven-fold increase in non-custodial arrests.
The Biden administration’s approach to interior enforcement reflected a deliberate policy choice to concentrate enforcement resources on the most serious criminal offenders and to effectively create a class of illegal aliens who would not be prioritized for removal regardless of their legal status. That policy, which Biden officials described as humane and rational prioritization, produced the enforcement baseline against which Trump’s 4.4-fold increase is measured. The Biden baseline was not the historical norm for ICE enforcement. It was itself a dramatic reduction from prior enforcement levels. The Trump administration’s numbers represent a restoration of something closer to historical enforcement levels, accelerated by a political commitment to mass deportation that goes beyond what any prior administration attempted.
The detention bed count used for interior enforcement roughly tripled during the first year of Trump’s second term. That increase was made possible by two factors: the administration’s willingness to spend more money on detention capacity, and the dramatic decline in border arrivals that freed up detention beds previously used for border enforcement for interior enforcement purposes instead. The decline in border crossings, itself a product of the administration’s deterrence-focused border policies, created a structural opportunity for interior enforcement that Trump’s team moved quickly to exploit.
Western New York provides a representative local case study of what the national numbers look like at the county level. ICE arrests in the eight counties of Western New York jumped from 464 in 2024 under Biden to 1,489 under Trump, a 220 percent increase. The monthly arrest rate under Biden averaged 130 at its peak in 2023, while Trump’s ICE has averaged 385 monthly arrests in the region since June 2025. The percentage of Western New York arrestees with final deportation orders fell from 78 percent under Biden to 47 percent under Trump, reflecting the expanded enforcement target population.
The ICE enforcement surge has proceeded in parallel with the administration’s broader immigration policy agenda, including the deployment of large numbers of agents to cities with significant illegal alien populations, the elimination of sanctuary city protections as an effective shield against federal enforcement through the use of federal funding leverage, and the expansion of ICE’s cooperation agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies. Each of these policy changes has contributed to the enforcement numbers, and the cumulative effect has been the largest interior immigration enforcement operation in modern American history.
The political impact of the enforcement surge has been significant and multidirectional. Republican supporters of the administration have pointed to the ICE numbers as proof that Trump is delivering on his core campaign promise to restore immigration enforcement and protect American communities from the consequences of the open-borders approach his predecessor pursued. Opponents have characterized the enforcement as indiscriminate, arguing that the decline in the percentage of arrests involving criminal aliens reflects an expansion of enforcement that sweeps up longtime residents without criminal histories alongside the dangerous individuals the administration says it prioritizes.
The administration has been consistent in rejecting the characterization of its enforcement as indiscriminate. Officials have argued that every individual in the country illegally is subject to immigration law and that the prior administration’s practice of effectively exempting large categories of illegal aliens from enforcement was itself the departure from normal policy, not the current enforcement posture. That argument is legally and historically grounded. The Biden administration’s enforcement priorities were an extraordinarily narrow interpretation of ICE’s statutory mandate, and the Trump administration’s broader enforcement posture represents a return to something closer to the statutory baseline.
The Minneapolis operation, dubbed Operation Metro Surge, temporarily reduced national enforcement numbers in February and early March 2026 following the shooting deaths of two Americans during enforcement operations in the city. The deaths generated intense political controversy and led to a brief reduction in the deployment footprint in Minneapolis, though national enforcement numbers were not dramatically affected by the episode over the full period covered by the Deportation Data Project analysis.
The voluntary departure and return figure of 28 times the Biden baseline is perhaps the most underappreciated number in the entire dataset. Each voluntary departure represents an individual who made a rational calculation that the enforcement environment under Trump made remaining in the country too risky to sustain. The deterrence effect of high-profile enforcement, aggressive street arrest operations, and the dramatically reduced release rate for detained individuals has produced a self-deportation dynamic that supplements the formal enforcement numbers in ways that the overall deportation count does not fully capture.
ICE street arrests going up by a factor of eleven represents the most visible and politically consequential dimension of the enforcement surge. Street arrests are the operations that generate the videos that circulate on social media, the confrontations that draw protesters, and the stories that Democratic politicians use to criticize the administration’s approach. They are also the mechanism that reaches the population most deeply embedded in American communities, the individuals who have been living and working in the country illegally for years and who would never be reached by enforcement that focused only on transfers from criminal custody.
The administration has made clear that the enforcement numbers it has achieved so far represent progress toward, not completion of, the mass deportation agenda Trump campaigned on. The stated goal of one million deportations per year remains substantially ahead of the current pace, which when annualized projects to under 300,000 interior deportations. The gap between stated goal and current pace reflects both the capacity constraints of the detention and deportation system and the legal challenges that have slowed enforcement operations in specific jurisdictions. Closing that gap is the stated objective of ongoing enforcement expansion.
The numbers released by the Deportation Data Project are based on individual-level data obtained through FOIA requests and represent the most granular and reliable analysis available of what ICE has actually accomplished since January 2025. They confirm what the administration has claimed and what its critics have feared: interior immigration enforcement under Trump’s second term is operating at a level and scale that has no precedent in the modern history of the agency, driven by a combination of policy changes, resource commitments, and political will that was absent under the prior administration.
The 4.4-fold increase in ICE arrests, the elevenfold increase in street arrests, the fivefold increase in interior deportations, and the 28-fold increase in voluntary departures all describe the same underlying reality from different angles: for the first time in years, the interior immigration enforcement system of the United States is functioning as the law requires and as the American people who voted for this administration were promised it would.
