Immigration arrests on public roads increased eleven-fold during the first year of United States President Donald Trump’s second term, equivalent to an increase of more than 1,000%, according to a new analysis from the University of California Berkeley.
The Deportation Data Project called the magnitude of the increase in street arrests, which includes those in immigration courts and local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, “a novel phenomenon.”
The analysis, which compares the last 6 months of the Joe Biden Administration (2021-2025) with data as of March 2026, also found that ICE detentions for transferring inmates from jails and prisons to their custody — which before 2025 represented the majority of the agency’s detentions — practically doubled in the last year.
The report highlights that the likelihood of ICE targeting people with criminal records was significantly reduced. These changes led to a more than 8-fold increase in the number of arrests of people without criminal records.
The investigation determined that detentions of immigrants without criminal records have increased by 770% in Trump’s second term.
The increase in detentions translated into an even greater increase (5 times) in the number of deportations, due to the expansion of the capacity of detention centers and the reduction in the number of releases.
The Trump Administration more than quadrupled (4.5 times) the number of detention beds for people arrested within the United States.
Added to this is that release within 60 days of arrest – a common practice for people without criminal records during the Biden Administration – became an exceptional event (7%).
The rate of deportations carried out within two months after arrest doubled from 27% to 57%.
The decline in the release rate was responsible for most of that increase in deportations. “Perhaps… many more people chose to withdraw their cases: voluntary departures and returns (which are rare compared to expulsions) multiplied by 28,” the report warns.
The analysis indicated that the slight decrease in immigration operations during February and early March 2026, after the murders of Americans Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, barely altered the patterns of the White House’s aggressive deportation campaign.
More than $250 million for police to arrest immigrants
The Administration of President Donald Trump has allocated more than $250 million to fund cooperation programs between the Department of Homeland Security and local police departments.
Under the so-called ‘Task Force’ models, the Government gives the power and encourages local authorities to arrest migrants, according to data published by the organization FWD.us
In total, 976 police departments across the country have signed these types of agreements with the federal government, which has disbursed more than $100,000 per department, with an additional bonus of $7,500 for each police officer who enters the program.
These types of agreements and financial incentives, said FWD.us vice president of criminal justice policy, Felicity Rose, “incentivize racial bias in policing and arrests for misdemeanors.”
When the initiative was announced in September last year, Homeland Security said it would help arrest and deport “the worst of the worst, including murderers, gang members, rapists and terrorists.”
However, under the Trump Administration, more than 70% of people held in migrant detention centers have not been convicted of any crime and those who do have convictions are mostly for minor crimes, including traffic violations, according to data from Syrause University’s TRAC center.
And, according to internal ICE documents, leaked in March by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, police officers who participate in the program only begin to receive extra bonuses when they arrest their first migrant.
The collaboration program with DHS also includes compensation for detaining unaccompanied minors, according to the leaked documents.
Florida and Texas are the two states in which the most police departments have signed these types of agreements, 270 and 161 respectively, according to data compiled by FWD.US
In total, the different local authorities in Florida have received more than 149 million dollars in federal disbursements for their collaboration with DHS, and those in Texas about 13 million.
According to FWD.US estimates, DHS has trained between 13,800 and 15,800 police officers nationwide to carry out immigration duties.
