Immigration arrests in the United States reached a new record last month, as President Donald Trump’s administration intensifies its crackdown on undocumented immigrants. According to the Deportation Data Project, a research initiative at the University of California, Berkeley that analyzes data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agents detained 49,571 foreign nationals in July, a 15 percent jump from June. Among those arrested were more than 1,400 Colombians, with Texas recording the highest number of Colombian detentions.
The figures mark the second straight month of record-breaking arrests and represent a daily average of roughly 1,600 detentions—more than five times the rate seen during the same period in 2024 under President Joe Biden. Still, that pace falls short of the administration’s stated goal of 2,000 arrests per day. Notably, nearly 75 percent of those detained in July had no criminal record, undercutting claims that the crackdown targets dangerous offenders.
The aggressive enforcement push has drawn sharp criticism after several fatal incidents, including the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis and a 26-year-old Colombian, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was killed during a botched raid in July even though he wasn’t the person ICE was looking for. The Department of Homeland Security has also faced scrutiny over a plan to spend up to $20 million on stun gloves for agents.
You can read the full report, including detailed state-by-state breakdowns, at El Tiempo.
Image: rickpilot_2000, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).