Putting Trump Administration Illegal Alien Arrests and Detainers in Context
February 19, 2025
Pawel Styrna
Upon returning to office, President Trump quickly and energetically moved to fulfill his campaign promise to repatriate illegal aliens – in particular criminals and gang members – to their homelands. Although the total numbers of ICE arrests and detainers lodged so far may seem relatively small, contrasting with the outsized outrage and moral panicwhipped up by the opponents of any kind of immigration enforcement, it is important to keep these numbers in context.
ABC News published an article on February 11 on arrests made by ICE and detainers lodged by the agency since Trump’s first week back in office. Based on information posted on ICE’s X page, the agency arrested 8,276 people between January 22 and January 31 while issuing 6,577 detainers. This comes to an average of 828 arrests per day, and ABC acknowledges that this greatly exceeded the Biden administration’s daily average of 310 ICE arrests per day in Fiscal Year 2024.
“However,” the author adds, “it’s not nearly the pace the Trump administration needs to hit if it wants to achieve its stated goal of deporting every undocumented immigrant. If ICE were to arrest 980 people and lodge 762 detainers per day every day going forward [i.e., January 25-31 daily averages], it would take over 17 years to arrest or lodge a detainer against 11.0 million people.”
https://www.fairus.org/blog/2025/02/19/putting-trump-administration-illegal-alien-arrests-and-detainers-context
