Ice makes more arrests but critics say some statements are not added

Washington, DC – the first month of Trump administration’s repression has leaping in arrest by American immigration and customs application.

But a closer look at numbers suggests why the White House was frustrated by the rhythm of arrests and deportations.

Immigration authorities do more arrests a day on average than they did under the President Biden. However, the latest data from the Department of Internal Security shows that ICE are still arresting They did not keep up with the objectives set by the Trump Administration officials.

At first, the Trump administration has published frequent updates announcing the daily ice arrest, which has reached the maximum at over 1,000 per day. But in February, those daily updates stopped.

The latest DHS data launched this week show that less than 600 people a day have been reserved in ice detention installations throughout the country in the first three weeks of February – far below 1,200 to 1,500 arrests per day that the administration officials said.

This has not stopped the Trump administration to make some bold statements.

The internal security secretary, Kristi Noem, announced this week that the administration arrested 20,000 immigrants without legal status in the first month. This is more than ICE has arrested on average in the Biden administration, although it is not yet enough to meet the declared share of the White House.

Then Noem took a step further. In a Official Declaration of DHSShe said that the Total Arrest in February of the ICE represents an “627% increase in monthly arrests, compared to only 33,000 in large arrests under Biden”, a demand on Social Media.

But immigration experts say that Noem’s mathematics is misleading, because they compare total ice arrests under the current administration with a lower subset of arrests.

“It compares apples with walnuts” to exaggerate the difference between the arrest numbers, said Jason Houer, former head of staff during the Biden administration.

The ice made a total of Over 113,000 arrests last year. The vast majority were “custody” arrests, which means that the target was already in the custody of state or local officials. A much smaller number of The arrests that ice makes they are considered “in general”.

But Noem’s statement does nothing clear. Also, it does not specify how many of the 20,000 ice arrests made in February were considered “big” arrests and how many have not been, leaving frustrated immigration experts.

DHS has not responded to a request requesting clarifications.

HOUSER says the Trump administration pushes ice officers to perform a series of large-scale application actions that play well in the media, Instead of focusing their resources on the most dangerous threats.

“Now it’s optical,” Houer said. “It’s no longer about public safety. It’s just this volume number. And we’re less sure of it.”

But Noem insists that the repression of the Trump administration makes the country safer.

“President Trump and this administration save lives every day because of the actions we take to ensure the border and deport illegal aliens,” she said in a statement this week.

However, the officials from the White House, including the border Tsar, Tom Homan, have expressed frustration with the rhythm of arrests and distances, and several top officials have already been eliminated from their positions.

The number of immigrants in the ice detention centers climbed this month to more than 43,000, the highest total before the Covid Pandemic during the first Trump administration. This week, ICE announced that they intend to Extend -and the network of detention centersIncluding what he called the first new installation that opened during the second Trump administration.

President Trump was employed during the 2024 election campaign to build the largest mass deportation operation in US history. And while the Trump administration has proposed the arrest file so far, he said a little about the pace of deportations.

“It has been noted that the Trump administration has not removed the deportation numbers,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington Non-Partisan Think Tank.

The number of migrants deported to Mexico decreased in the first weeks of the Trump administration, Bush-Joseph said.

But she said it was difficult for observers to see a complete picture of what is happening with deportations. The Biden administration has launched detailed data on the monthly deletion and return.

So far, said Bush-Joseph, the Trump administration has not.

“This could indicate that it takes them some time to really try to get up and work on this promise of mass deportations,” she said.