U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 10,000 people over a five-day period at the end of June, marking a major push by the agency tasked with carrying out the Trump administration's mass deportations agenda.
The increase in arrest numbers comes as a Houston man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, was fatally shot by an ICE agent on Tuesday morning. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, said the shooting took place during a “targeted enforcement operation." Federal officials claimed Araujo attempted to evade arrest and tried to run over an ICE agent with his vehicle, prompting the agent to shoot Araujo in self-defense, DHS said.
Democratic elected officials in the Houston area and across Texas, along with local civil rights groups, have called for an independent investigation into the shooting.
Patricia Cruz is a resident of Houston's East End, where the shooting occurred. She said ICE has increased its presence in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in the past weeks.
"They are targeting the neighborhood," Cruz said. "My sister got stopped a couple of weeks ago, and they just ran into her like she was a criminal. And that's not right. That's not right. We're being targeted. ... I've been here in Houston for over 40-plus years, and I've never seen something like this before."
The nationwide arrest numbers, obtained from a person familiar with the information who spoke anonymously to discuss data that has not been publicly released, comes after the agency shifted its approach from high-profile arrest sweeps in major American cities to quieter ways to reach President Donald Trump's deportation goals.
The figures indicate that while the administration is no longer cracking down on individual cities, the arrests continue and are surging.
The total number of arrests during the five-day period in late June translates into roughly 2,000 arrests per day. It was not clear where the arrests had taken place.
The spike in arrests was first reported by The New York Times.
"Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump's promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists," said the Department of Homeland Security in a statement. "Our message is clear: if you come to our country illegally, we will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you."
The arrests news also comes as the number of people entered into ICE detention facilities climbed in June to roughly 39,000 after hovering around 30,000 per month since February, according to information obtained by The Associated Press.
ICE doesn't publicly release arrest data, making exact comparisons with previous periods difficult. But according to data provided to UC Berkeley's Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press, 2,000 arrests per day would mark a sharp increase over previous periods.
December had the most ICE arrests since the beginning of the Trump administration, and that month only averaged 1,283 arrests per day nationwide.
In January, at a time when the administration flooded the streets of Minneapolis and surrounding regions with hundreds of immigration enforcement officers, arrests averaged about 1,212 per day across the country.
But Minneapolis proved to be a turning point in the Trump administration's mass deportations agenda after two American citizens were killed by immigration officers while protesting the crackdown in Minneapolis.
Border Czar Tom Homan started drawing down the number of officers in Minnesota as the agency stepped back from the flashy surge operations that had been common during the tenure of then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Operations under Noem, headed by former Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino were marked by frequent clashes between immigration enforcement officers and protesters, in footage that was often splashed across the Department's social media channels.
In February, immigration arrests fell to 1,057 a day, according to information from the Deportation Data Project. The Project sued through the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the ICE arrests data and it is only current through February.
After Noem was fired, her successor at Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, suggested he'd be taking a more low-profile approach to immigration enforcement and he aimed to get the department out of the headlines. But Mullin was expected to adopt Trump's priorities on immigration.
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