After a three-month-long delay, the longest in its\u00a0recent\u00a0history, the Department of Homeland Security\u00a0on July 20 published\u00a0detention numbers\u00a0that show\u00a0immigration enforcement\u00a0grew again\u00a0in\u00a0the interior\u00a0of the country\u00a0under\u00a0Secretary Markwayne\u00a0Mullin.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0figures\u00a0show\u00a0ICE\u00a0arrests\u00a0at a record level, with\u00a0the number of\u00a0people\u00a0in detention\u00a0increasing again,\u00a0notably reversing a dip from\u00a0detainees with no criminal record.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0new data showing an uptick in enforcement activity\u00a0follows backlash over recent fatal shootings, one in Texas and one in Maine, that again thrust the agency into the national spotlight. Earlier in 2026, the agency’s high-profile operations in multiple cities led to calls for\u00a0more accountability and transparency\u00a0in immigration enforcement and a months-long stalemate over the agency’s funding.<\/p>\n
Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the new numbers point to a change\u00a0in\u00a0immigration tactics but\u00a0with similar results\u00a0as before.<\/p>\n
“The\u00a0previous\u00a0tactics were more visual, were more publicly controversial. They were more targeted in places and cities that were pushing against the Trump administration,” Ruiz Soto said.\u00a0“Now the strategy is less visible … at least until the recent death, but the outcomes\u00a0haven’t\u00a0really changed significantly if you look at the bigger picture.”<\/p>\n
Ruiz Soto pointed to the share of people detained without a criminal record, which has grown the most of any group under the second Trump administration, staying roughly even during Mullin’s first months.<\/p>\n
The new numbers show the average\u00a0daily\u00a0number of people booked into detention\u00a0from ICE arrests\u00a0reached over 1,300 in\u00a0June\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a\u00a032%\u00a0increase\u00a0since April,\u00a0Mullin’s first full month.<\/p>\n
It’s\u00a0also the highest of any month going back to 2021, according to a USA TODAY compilation of historical files.<\/p>\n
While the\u00a0increase\u00a0is significant, the\u00a0pace of\u00a0removals has stayed\u00a0roughly\u00a0flat, with the total number of people in detention increasing after the reversal that followed the deadly shootings in Minneapolis in January.<\/p>\n
A DHS spokesperson said in an email the agency has been delivering on President\u00a0Donald Trump’s promise to arrest and deport people with a criminal record. The spokesperson pointed to most ICE arrests being from people charged or convicted of a crime. The latest data shows detainees from ICE arrests without a criminal record made up 37% of the detained population, compared with the 6% in January 2025.<\/p>\n
Data published July 20 marked\u00a0over\u00a0100 days\u00a0since the last update in April, pushing the average time between releases so far in 2026 to 42 days,\u00a0nearly three\u00a0times the historical schedule.<\/p>\n
Through 2025,\u00a0Trump’s\u00a0first year back in office, and the four years before, ICE had been\u00a0relatively consistent\u00a0about publishing data\u00a0roughly every\u00a0two weeks, following a congressional\u00a0mandate\u00a0to do so.<\/p>\n
“We were flying in the dark for months.\u00a0That’s a long time\u00a0to\u00a0really\u00a0not\u00a0know what the strategy was and what the administration was doing, and so it’s welcome that they finally got around to putting this out here,”\u00a0said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.<\/p>\n
The questions about transparency linger on other fronts too.<\/p>\n
The recent back-to-back shootings\u00a0have\u00a0raised questions about why the agents were not wearing body cameras\u00a0despite a promise by federal authorities to equip officers nationwide with the technology. In response, White House border czar\u00a0Tom Homan\u00a0on July 19 said ICE will require its officers to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera.<\/p>\n
More:\u00a0<\/strong>Latest immigration data with USA TODAY’s immigration tracker<\/p>\n DHS typically publishes additional datasets that dive into other aspects of immigration enforcement in more detail, such as \u00a0arrests\u00a0and\u00a0deportations. However, the agency hasn’t updated those since the end of 2024, making the detention management data released July 20 the last accountability tool to track immigration enforcement, such as how many are detained and the share of people with and without a criminal record. It also tracks detention book-ins, which closely match arrests, but don’t contain information like the location and if a local law enforcement agency was involved.<\/p>\n “It reflects a lack of transparency on their part that they’re not forthcoming and regular with these releases that they’re mandated to make,” Bier\u00a0said\u00a0of the detention data.\u00a0“This high-level information only takes you so far, and you need a lot more information to make a good assessment of what’s been happening.”<\/p>\n This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:\u00a0<\/em>Immigration arrests hit a new record, DHS says in long-awaited data<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a three-month-long delay, the longest in its\u00a0recent\u00a0history, the Department of Homeland Security\u00a0on July 20 published\u00a0detention numbers\u00a0that show\u00a0immigration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3574,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/3574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}