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A new analysis of federal immigration enforcement indicates that while immigration arrests surged during both of Donald Trump’s presidencies, the proportion of those arrested who had actual criminal convictions dropped sharply. The research suggests a disconnect between the public narrative of targeting criminals and the reality of enforcement on the ground. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, is the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws within the interior of the United States. During the second Trump administration, officials announced an expansive immigration enforcement effort, repeatedly citing public safety and the need to remove individuals who commit crimes as the primary motivation.
However, prior evidence suggests that federal immigration crackdowns do not necessarily improve public safety. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2024 found that stricter immigration enforcement policies during the first Trump administration produced no measurable change in immigrant arrest rates relative to non-immigrants in California and Texas.
Despite intense public debate over these policies, there has been little real-time analysis of how ICE actually conducts its interior arrests during periods of aggressive expansion. The research, led by Chloe N. East of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Caitlin Patler of the University of California, Berkeley, aimed to map out exactly who is being targeted, where arrests are happening, and what methods are being used.
To understand these patterns, the researchers analyzed administrative records from the Deportation Data Project covering more than 1.5 million ICE arrests made between October 2015 and March 2026. Because enforcement levels dropped to a ten-year low during the Biden administration due to the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary changes in ICE’s duties at the border, the researchers focused their comparison on the periods immediately surrounding the two Trump inaugurations. The first term window covered roughly December 2015 through March 2018, and the second term window covered December 2024 through March 2026.
The team looked at the total number of arrests, the geographic region where each arrest took place, and whether the arrested person had a criminal conviction of any kind. They also categorized the arrests by the specific method ICE used. The two primary methods analyzed were Law Enforcement Agency collaborative arrests and Community Arrests.
Law Enforcement Agency arrests happen when ICE takes custody of an individual who is already being held in a local or state jail or prison. Community Arrests occur when ICE officers apprehend people directly in their neighborhoods, homes, or workplaces. By breaking the data down this way, the researchers could see whether changes in who ICE was arresting were driven by a shift in their physical tactics.
The analysis showed that the scale of arrests increased massively under both administrations, but particularly during the second term. In the year before the first Trump inauguration, ICE averaged 304 arrests per day. This rose to 436 per day in the first 14 months of his first term, representing a 43 percent increase.
Before the second term, arrests were at a similar pre-inauguration baseline of 304 per day. But between January 2025 and March 2026, the volume surged to an average of 952 arrests per day. This represents a 214 percent increase compared to the prior year.
As the sheer number of arrests went up, the percentage of individuals with a criminal conviction went down. During the second term, the criminal conviction rate among those arrested by ICE fell to 34 percent. This was near the lowest point observed in the entire ten-and-a-half-year period the researchers studied.
The researchers also found a massive shift in how ICE operated on the ground during the second term. Community Arrests jumped from making up 17 percent of all apprehensions in the year prior to 47 percent between January 2025 and March 2026. This aggressive shift toward direct neighborhood enforcement did not happen during the first term.
Because Community Arrests generally involve fewer people with criminal convictions than jail-based arrests, the researchers wanted to know if this change in tactics explained the overall drop in the conviction rate. They found that the shift in method only explained about a quarter of the decline in the second term.
The remaining three-quarters of the drop happened because ICE was arresting fewer people with criminal records within both categories. Specifically, during the second term, the conviction rate fell by 10 percentage points during Community Arrests and 16 percentage points during Law Enforcement Agency arrests. This indicates a broad change in who is being targeted, independent of the method used.
The study also mapped out geographic differences across ICE’s 25 regional jurisdictions. In the second term, regions with steep spikes in jail-based arrests included El Paso, Miami, New Orleans, and San Antonio. In contrast, other regions saw sharp spikes in Community Arrests. These included areas like Boston, Chicago, Newark, Seattle, and all jurisdictions in California and New York.
The researchers note this pattern aligns with the administration’s stated goal of targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which are cities or states that limit local police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Despite these stark regional differences in how arrests were carried out, the decline in the share of arrested individuals with criminal convictions was nearly universal across the country.
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The data relies on ICE’s own administrative records, which only capture people who are formally processed into the system. The analysis also focuses strictly on interior enforcement within the United States, meaning it does not account for apprehensions made by border agents at the physical border.
Additionally, the researchers point out that they cannot be certain why the conviction rate dropped specifically within jail-based arrests. It might be due to changes in how ICE prioritizes targets in jails, or it could be related to changes in local police practices that result in different populations ending up in local custody. Future research will need to explore these underlying mechanisms.
Finally, while the research provides a detailed picture of the early months of the second Trump administration, immigration policies and enforcement strategies can shift rapidly. Ongoing tracking will be needed to see if these patterns hold steady over the coming years and to understand their broader impact on immigrant communities.
The study, “ICE arrests, 2015–2026: Variation in targeting, method, and geography,” was authored by Chloe N. East, Caitlin Patler, and Elizabeth Cox.