ICE arrests reached nearly 50,000 in July, AP analysis finds
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded 49,571 arrests in July, the highest monthly total during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to an Associated Press analysis of government data provided by ICE to the Deportation Data Project.
The July total was about 15% higher than the 43,021 arrests recorded in June and about 70% higher than the 29,241 recorded in February. The figures offer a recent view of the scale of the administration’s interior immigration-enforcement operation at a time when regular, comprehensive public reporting from the federal government remains limited.
What the July number measures
The count covers ICE arrests inside the United States, primarily activity by the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. It does not measure encounters at the U.S.-Mexico or U.S.-Canada borders, CBP apprehensions, inadmissible arrivals, detention stays or completed removals.
That distinction matters. Customs and Border Protection reports activity at ports of entry and along the borders, while ICE handles much of the federal government’s interior immigration enforcement, detention and removal work. An arrest also does not establish the final outcome of an immigration case or a criminal proceeding.
The 49,571 figure did not come from a newly issued ICE monthly press release. It comes from government records provided by ICE to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by AP.
State and local partnerships accounted for part of the total
About 6,500 of the July arrests, or roughly 13% of the total, were attributed to state and local agencies working through agreements under Section 287(g) of federal immigration law, according to AP’s analysis.
The 287(g) program allows certain state and local officers to perform specified federal immigration-enforcement functions under ICE direction and oversight. Participation in the program does not mean that every ICE arrest in a participating state was made by a local officer.
Texas and Florida together accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, AP reported. The available figures show the geographic concentration of arrests but do not, by themselves, establish the role of particular counties, employers or local institutions.
More than half had no criminal conviction or pending charge
AP’s analysis found that more than half of the people arrested in July had no criminal conviction and were not facing a pending criminal charge. Less than one-quarter of those arrested had been convicted of a crime, according to the report.
That category should be read narrowly. It does not mean the people arrested had no alleged immigration violation, and it does not predict whether an immigration judge, criminal court or other authority will later resolve an individual case in a particular way.
Why the FOIA-derived data matters
The Deportation Data Project published an updated ICE data package on August 24, 2026. The release covers ICE encounters, detainer requests, arrests, detention book-ins and removals from October 1, 2022, through August 6, 2026. The project said it received the underlying records on August 21 and obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The release provides one of the few recent ways to examine ICE activity in detail because the federal government has provided limited regular public reporting on the agency’s operations. The project recommends describing the records as government data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request, processed by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the organization using them.
What remains uncertain
The Deportation Data Project says some fields in the release are manually entered, some information is missing and field names, definitions and data formats can change over time. The project specifically cautioned that the new arrest-city field is inconsistently entered and is missing for some observations. It also said the data may be revised.
The July arrest count therefore should not be treated as a complete account of what happened to each person after arrest. The records do not by themselves show how many people were detained, released, removed or allowed to pursue an immigration claim in court.
What to watch next
Future ICE disclosures, additional FOIA releases, detention data and immigration-court records will help show whether the increase continues and what happens after arrest. The immediate takeaway is that the nearly 50,000 figure tracks interior ICE enforcement—not border crossings—and that state and local cooperation through 287(g) accounted for a meaningful share of the July total.
Sources
- Associated Press: ICE arrests jumped to nearly 50,000 in July
- Deportation Data Project: ICE data release through August 6, 2026
- WUNC/NPR: Immigration arrests soar, hitting 50,000 in July
Look for updates to this story
Discover more from Interactive News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.