Immigration arrests surged last month in Washington

Federal immigration arrests across Washington rose sharply in June as the Trump administration continues its aggressive nationwide push for deportations, according to new data.

Arrests in June, more than 275, were at least double any month since President Donald Trump reclaimed the presidency in January. At the same time, the share of arrestees in Washington with criminal records dropped sharply, to less than one-third.

The figures come from the Deportation Data Project out of the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers received the information via Freedom of Information Act requests. The data runs through June 26.

“I think that every community member in our country who is watching the news and comes from an immigrant family is increasingly concerned about their safety here,” said Caedmon Magboo Cahill, director of policy advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington chapter.

The data provides the most complete look yet at the numbers underpinning the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin defended the administration’s approach. “We are continuing to go after the worst of the worst — including gang members, pedophiles, and rapists,” she said in a statement.

“We are delivering on President Trump’s and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe,” McLaughlin added.

The dramatic rise in arrests last month in Washington, which mirrors national trends, came as top federal officials upped arrest quotas.

Congress this month added $170 billion to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda, an extraordinary funding injection sure to expand deportation efforts.

The legislation makes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the largest federal law enforcement agency.

“We’re bracing for even more ICE activity throughout the country and in our state,” Cahill said.

The rise in local arrests coincides with a surge in flights of migrants detained elsewhere and brought to Washington for detention. This has strained capacity at the state’s only federal immigration detention facility, the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.

The Berkeley researchers’ data isn’t comprehensive. For one, it only includes ICE administrative arrests, excluding Customs and Border Protection. And, in some cases, no state is listed for individual arrest records. So the arrest figures for Washington are likely an undercount.

Here are a few other takeaways from the statistics.

Arrests up

In the first five months of Trump’s presidency, ICE arrests jumped 35% in Washington.

From Inauguration Day to June 26, the feds arrested 782 people, according to the Deportation Data Project. That’s up from 581 in the same period last year.

So far this year, ICE is averaging five arrests per day in Washington, an 85% leap from all of 2024.

Catalina Velasquez, the executive director of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, said this increase in arrests since Trump retook office “represents an immeasurable amount of pain on Washington communities.”

Still, Washington’s increase pales in comparison to much of the rest of the nation, as many states have seen arrests double or triple, according to a New York Times analysis. Arrests in Idaho, for example, have skyrocketed around 10-fold.

“As immigration enforcement agents are ruthlessly targeting, surveilling, and detaining community members, this comparatively lower increase in ICE arrests demonstrates the necessity and importance of a proactive, community-centered deportation defense infrastructure ready to mobilize and protect our communities,” said Velasquez, citing her organization’s rapid response teams.

The ACLU’s Washington chapter has seen a nearly five-times jump in immigration-related calls since last year, Cahill said.

Examples of calls include people concerned about Medicaid data sharing with immigration enforcement and someone who couldn’t get a loan because of the perception they’re from a Latin American country and wouldn’t be able to repay the money if ICE arrests them.

How many have been convicted of crimes?

Since starting his first campaign for president, Trump has especially focused his rhetoric on immigrants with criminal records.

In the first five months of his second term, 41% of those arrested in Washington have had criminal records, according to the Deportation Data Project’s statistics. Another 16% have pending criminal charges.

That’s up from 36% and 4% respectively in the same span last year when former President Joe Biden was in office.

But of those arrested this June, only 31% had criminal records, as immigration agents tried to reach hefty quotas.

McLaughlin claimed 70% of ICE arrests nationwide have been of “criminal illegal aliens” and accused the Deportation Data Project of cherry-picking data “to peddle a false narrative.”

“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” she said. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally. It is not an accurate description to say they are ‘non-criminals.’”

Living in the United States illegally is a civil violation, not criminal.

Liliana Chumpitasi, deputy director at the advocacy organization La Resistencia, said in an email that this tough-on-crime approach “is used as an excuse to destroy our communities.”

Demographic shift

The Trump administration, in Washington and elsewhere, has focused its enforcement efforts on immigrants from Latin American countries.

The top six countries from which migrants emigrated are in Latin America. Migrants from Mexico have made up nearly half of the arrests in Washington since Trump took office. Mexico is followed by Venezuelan immigrants, who have been a specific target of the federal government amid claims migrants have ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.

The countries that follow are Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Nicaragua. Migrants from India rank seventh.

During the same period last year, Indian immigrants were second most likely to be arrested.

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has suggested federal agents can question people “based on their physical appearance.”

Chumpitasi said, “They can’t be more clear about racial profiling than that.”

The Trump administration has also seemed to focus more on arresting men, as they make up seven in every eight arrestees since Inauguration Day. That’s up from less than 75% in this span last year.

Expedited removal

Under Trump, ICE has also moved to more quickly deport immigrants through a process called expedited removal.

This process allows immigration officials to deport immigrants without legal status without a hearing before a judge. Trump expanded expedited removal in his first term, before Biden dialed it back.

From Jan. 20 to June 26 this year, 13% of arrested immigrants were labeled as expedited removals, according to the data. That’s up from 3% in the same period last year under Biden.

The Trump administration came under fire in Seattle and elsewhere in May as it moved to dismiss many immigration cases in court so they could immediately detain those migrants and immediately place them into expedited removal proceedings.

Advocacy groups sued last week over due process concerns associated with this new practice.

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