Trump Immigration Raids: Arrests, Due Process, and Deaths in Detention

Trump immigration raids have become the defining feature of the administration’s second-term enforcement push, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement averaging roughly 1,200 arrests a day, more than 595,000 noncitizens taken into custody between January 20 and December 10, 2025, and 622,000 removals reported by December 19.¹ The campaign reaches into workplaces, homes, courthouses, schools, and streets, and it has produced new detention facilities, Supreme Court rulings, and a sharp rise in arrests of people with no criminal record.

How Big the Raids Have Gotten

The administration set a target of one million deportations a year and backed it with money and personnel. Congress approved $170 billion in immigration enforcement funding in July 2025, including $45 billion for ICE detention, and added roughly $70 billion more through September 2029 under the Secure America Act signed in June 2026.¹ The Secure America Act passed without proposed oversight reforms, including requirements for judicial warrants on private property, bans on racial profiling, and restrictions on masked agents.²

“At-large” arrests — operations in communities rather than at the border — rose 600 percent in the first nine months of the administration.³¹ Discretionary releases dropped 87 percent. For every person released, 14.3 were deported directly from custody, up from a ratio of 1.6 in December 2024.

The pace shifted in mid-2026. ICE arrests declined, and the detention population fell from about 72,000 in January 2026 to 58,000 by early May 2026, as administration officials described a move away from high-profile city sweeps toward a “quieter” approach while keeping the one-million-per-year removal target.⁴

Where ICE Is Now Allowed to Operate

On his first day in office, Trump rescinded the decade-old “sensitive locations” policy that had restricted immigration enforcement at schools, churches, and hospitals. Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive lifting those barriers, and ICE issued interim guidance the next day authorizing civil enforcement at courthouses.⁵⁶

The reach of that reversal is not total. By March 2025, a court injunction protected roughly 1,400 places of worship across 36 states, requiring ICE to obtain warrants before entering and to otherwise follow the earlier Obama-era guidance.⁶ School districts including Fresno Unified and Chicago Public Schools adopted policies requiring criminal warrants before agents could enter campuses.⁵ As of May 2025, there were no confirmed reports of immigration arrests inside hospitals, though some institutions, including NYU Langone Health, reportedly told employees they would comply with immigration officials.⁷ In New York, a federal judge upheld the state’s Protect Our Courts Act, which bars ICE civil arrests in state courthouses, ruling that states have authority as proprietors to manage their own facilities.⁸

Who Is Actually Being Arrested

The profile of ICE detainees shifted sharply. Noncriminal detentions rose 2,450 percent. As of early January 2026, 48 percent of ICE detainees had only an immigration-related charge, 26 percent had a pending criminal charge, and 26 percent had a criminal conviction.¹³ In one named sweep, Operation Catahoula Crunch in southeast Louisiana, 38 people were arrested in the first two days; records reviewed by the Associated Press indicated fewer than one-third had criminal records.⁹

U.S. citizens have also been caught up in raids. During the July 2025 operation at Glass House Brands cannabis cultivation sites near Camarillo and Carpinteria, California, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran working for a security contractor was detained for three days without charges.¹⁰ California Assembly Democrats said in June 2026 that courts had ruled 90 percent of ICE detentions tied to the June 2025 Los Angeles operations illegal, affecting roughly 10,000 people.¹¹

Worksite Raids

Workplace enforcement has been a central tool. Raids have hit small businesses disproportionately and have focused on arresting workers rather than punishing employers.¹² In California, agents raided Ambiance Apparel in downtown Los Angeles in June 2025, detaining dozens and leading away at least 14 garment workers, and arrested more than 30 immigrants on Ventura County farms the same month.¹³

The Glass House operation on July 10, 2025, was the most consequential single raid of the year. Federal agents arrested 361 people and detained 14 minors. One worker, Jaime Alanis Garcia, died after falling from a greenhouse roof during the raid. By late October 2025, roughly half of those arrested had been deported. Detainees reported being held in temporary processing centers without beds, showers, or adequate food for up to two weeks, and advocates said agents exploited language barriers and denied access to lawyers to pressure people into signing voluntary departure forms.¹⁴

Other worksite raids have had immediate ripple effects. In Ottumwa, Iowa, 200 meatpacking workers with previously legal status were terminated. A dairy farm in Lovington, New Mexico, shut down temporarily after 11 employees were arrested. A commercial shipping hub in Edison, New Jersey, closed for days after a raid and I-9 audit.¹⁵

Neighborhood Sweeps and Roving Patrols

Starting with before-dawn sweeps in Kern County, California, in January 2025, tactics expanded into surprise neighborhood operations, roving vehicle patrols, and stops at Home Depots, car washes, and Latino markets. Enforcement became increasingly data-driven, with drone surveillance in urban areas and artificial intelligence used to identify targets and analyze visa and asylum applicants’ digital histories.¹⁶

Named operations have reached deep into particular communities. The December 2025 Operation Catahoula Crunch concentrated on Kenner, Louisiana — the state’s highest concentration of Hispanic residents — and caused significant absenteeism in local schools.⁹ Federal agents also launched operations targeting the Somali community in Minneapolis over visa fraud allegations and operated in Chicago for several months in the fall of 2025.¹⁷ In Charlotte, North Carolina, enforcement operations triggered a student walkout and approximately 30,000 absences — about 20 percent of the district’s enrollment.¹⁸

Local 287(g) agreements, under which ICE deputizes local law enforcement, surged from 135 agencies at the end of fiscal year 2024 to over 1,400 across 41 states by mid-2026.⁴ That expansion means local officers in many places now participate directly in federal arrests.

The Role of the Military

About 7,000 troops were deployed to the Southwest border by December 2025 at a cost of roughly $1.3 billion, and the administration designated border areas as “National Defense Areas.” The administration also pushed National Guard deployments into cities. Over 4,000 troops were sent to Los Angeles after civil unrest over immigration arrests, with additional personnel in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans, and Minneapolis.¹

Interior military deployments hit a major legal wall in December 2025. In Trump v. Illinois, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the government had failed to identify legal authority allowing the military to execute laws in Illinois, effectively blocking federalization of the National Guard for interior immigration enforcement over a governor’s objection. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented.¹⁹²⁰

What the Courts Have Said About Stops and Deportations

The Supreme Court has split the difference on the raids: it has let aggressive tactics proceed while policing some outer limits.

In Noem v. Perdomo, decided September 8, 2025, the Court stayed a lower-court injunction that had prohibited ICE agents in the Central District of California from conducting investigatory stops based on apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, presence at locations where undocumented immigrants gather, or type of work. Justice Kavanaugh wrote in concurrence that ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion but the “totality of the circumstances” could justify stops. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”²¹²²

On the Alien Enemies Act, which the administration invoked to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua without hearings, the Supreme Court in April 2025 vacated lower-court orders blocking the deportations in Trump v. J.G.G. on procedural grounds, ruling that challenges must be filed as habeas corpus petitions in the district of confinement. The Court also affirmed that deportees were entitled to judicial review and “reasonable time” to seek habeas relief before removal.²³²⁴²⁵

The Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia case shows what happens when the system removes someone it was not supposed to. An immigration judge barred his deportation to El Salvador in 2019 because of a “clear probability of future persecution.” ICE deported him there anyway in March 2025, to the CECOT mega-prison, and the government acknowledged an “administrative error.”²⁶ A federal judge ordered his return; the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the government’s attempt to invalidate that order in April 2025.²⁷ Internal communications later showed DHS officials discussed portraying him as an MS-13 leader despite having no evidence, and senior Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni was fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi after advocating for his return.²⁸ He was eventually returned to the United States in June 2025 but remained in ICE detention as of September 2025, pursuing a new asylum application.

In Washington, D.C., a class-action suit filed in September 2025, Escobar Molina v. DHS, alleges a pattern of warrantless arrests without probable cause.²⁹

Due Process in Immigration Court

Immigrants in deportation proceedings are not entitled to government-provided lawyers. An estimated 70 percent of people in immigration detention facing deportation in the last three years went unrepresented. The Department of Justice terminated multiple programs that had provided at least some legal access, including the Legal Orientation Program, the Immigration Court Helpdesk, and the Counsel for Children Initiative, which had represented 26,000 unaccompanied minors.³⁰

The administration expanded “expedited removal,” which allows DHS to deport people without a hearing before an immigration judge. It also fired approximately 100 of 700 immigration judges, targeting those with immigrant-defense backgrounds, and required remaining judges to hear six cases per day, double the prior average.³¹ In February 2026, an Interim Final Rule made summary dismissal the default for appeals to the Board of Immigration Appeals, though portions were blocked by a federal court.³² ICE has also adopted the tactic of detaining asylum seekers in courthouse hallways immediately after their cases are dismissed.

Detention Conditions and Deaths

Deaths in ICE detention during 2025 were the highest on record for a non-COVID year. The administration prohibited members of Congress from conducting facility inspections and eliminated three immigration oversight sub-agencies.³ Detainees across the system have reported punishing conditions, enforced isolation, neglect of people with disabilities, denial of access to counsel, and inadequate medical care, with ICE frequently failing to track detainees’ locations and leaving families unable to find relatives.³¹

The administration’s largest new facility, Camp East Montana, opened in August 2025 on the grounds of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. A Government Accountability Office report released in June 2026 found that the $1.3 billion contract was plagued by waste: the Army and ICE selected a contractor with no prior detention experience and used a contracting vehicle not previously employed for detention services, acting under “expedited time frames directed by senior leadership.”³³³⁴

In July 2025, Florida opened a detention facility on an abandoned airstrip in the Everglades near Ochopee, quickly dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Built from tents and trailers in swampland, it was challenged in H.C.R. v. Noem, with advocates alleging a lack of medical access, extreme heat, overcrowding, and no access to legal counsel.³⁵ The facility held more than 20,000 people during its operation and cost an estimated $450 million annually.³⁶ A federal court ordered ICE to provide detainees access to counsel in March 2026, and Governor Ron DeSantis announced the facility’s permanent closure on June 25, 2026.

Trump directed on January 29, 2025, that the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay be expanded to “full capacity” to hold “high-priority criminal aliens.” In practice, capacity reached about 400 beds, far below the 30,000 initially announced. Since February 2025, 832 detainees have cycled through the base via more than 100 flights. As of May 2026, only six detainees remained, all Haitian nationals. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary ruling in December 2025 describing the detention effort as “impermissibly punitive” and likely unlawful, though the judge did not block the operation.³⁷

The Shooting of Renee Nicole Good

On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, mother of three, and prize-winning poet, at an ICE raid in south Minneapolis. City leaders and her family said she was acting as a legal observer. The administration claimed she had tried to “weaponize her vehicle” to run over an officer. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the shooting “reckless.”³⁸³⁹

Video of the shooting was widely circulated. A poll taken a week later found 53 percent of respondents believed the shooting was unjustified, and Trump’s approval rating on immigration dropped to 38 percent. President Trump called Good “very violent” and “very radical,” and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem accused her of “domestic terrorism.” Six veteran DOJ prosecutors resigned in protest after the agency shifted its investigation toward Good’s wife rather than the agent who shot her. Over 1,000 protest events were recorded as part of a “Justice for Renee” weekend of action.⁴⁰

Sanctuary Cities and Local Resistance

The Department of Justice established a formal “Sanctuary Jurisdictions” list under Executive Order 14287, designating 12 states, several counties, and 18 cities as jurisdictions whose policies “materially impede” federal immigration enforcement. The listed states included California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York; designated cities ranged from Boston and Philadelphia to Albuquerque and Seattle.⁴¹

Local responses have varied. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson designated city-owned spaces “ICE Free Zones.” In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey banned the use of city-owned parking facilities for staging civil immigration operations. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka organized a human barricade to block the reopening of an immigration detention facility in May 2025. In New Orleans, the Sheriff’s Office denied ICE access to jails, and the City Council launched a portal for residents to document potential abuses by federal agents.¹⁷ San Francisco’s district attorney announced plans to charge ICE agents with state law violations such as excessive force if they conducted arrests in the city. By contrast, Louisiana enacted a law criminalizing interference with federal immigration enforcement.¹⁸

Protests and Community Watch Programs

Immigration-related demonstrations reached record levels. In early 2025 alone, more than 700 protests occurred across all 50 states, with more than 250 in a single week in early February. Ninety-seven percent were peaceful, though law enforcement deployed tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets at demonstrators at least eight times, and three car-ramming attacks targeted large demonstrations in Texas, Arizona, and Utah. At least 12 incidents of private citizens impersonating ICE agents were identified across eight states, with charges including sexual assault and kidnapping.⁴²

Communities organized “ICE Watch” or “Migra Watch” programs with thousands of participants using whistles, car horns, and patrols near schools and churches to warn neighbors of approaching agents. One community defense organization reported training over 7,000 people to conduct neighborhood patrols and document enforcement actions as of December 2025. In Chicago, agents deployed tear gas and pepper balls during an October 14, 2025, confrontation on the South Side.¹⁸

Economic Fallout

California’s total workforce dropped 3.1 percent from May to June 2025 after worksite raids, and agricultural employment nationally fell by 155,000 workers between March and July 2025. In California’s Central Valley, school attendance dropped 22 percent following early regional raids. Fresh vegetable and meat prices rose at rates correlated with agricultural labor shortages.¹⁵ Pew Research found the national immigrant population declined by about 1.4 million in the first half of 2025, the first such drop in 50 years.¹⁶

Projections at scale are stark. According to the U.S. Joint Economic Committee, deporting 8.3 million undocumented immigrants would reduce real GDP by 7.4 percent by 2028 — a contraction exceeding the Great Recession — and raise consumer prices by 9.1 percent. Even a narrower scenario of 1.3 million deportations would shrink GDP by 1.2 percent and raise prices by 1.5 percent. The committee projected annual losses of $23 billion for Social Security and $6 billion for Medicare in lost tax contributions.⁴³ The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated the average cost of each deportation at $70,236 and projected that a four-year deportation policy would increase primary deficits by $349.6 billion over a decade.⁴⁴

Know Your Rights and Where to Get Help

Civil liberties organizations have published materials in multiple languages for people who may encounter ICE. The ACLU’s “We Have Rights” campaign, produced with Brooklyn Defender Services, distributes videos in English, Spanish, Urdu, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Russian, Mandarin, and French covering scenarios such as ICE agents at a home or conducting a street stop.⁴⁵ The National Immigration Law Center provides a toolkit for organizations responding to mass worksite raids, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center distributes “Red Cards” with instructions for asserting rights during ICE encounters.⁴⁶ If an ICE agent appears at a home, the court injunction protecting roughly 1,400 houses of worship, state laws like New York’s Protect Our Courts Act, and local school and city policies may change what agents are allowed to do without a judicial warrant — so the location, the jurisdiction, and whether the warrant is signed by a judge all matter.

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