ICE officers and agents arrested roughly 50,000 people in August, according to a senior Department of Homeland Security official familiar with the preliminary arrest data.
That number is on par with July’s number, which was the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in the midst of a nationwide arrest surge that is not as visible as aggressive enforcement efforts earlier in the year, when the Border Patrol was going city by city, culminating in the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis.
Arrests fell sharply in February and March but then began to rise in May. June and July both had record ICE arrests, according to ICE arrest data.
In June, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed a roughly $70 billion package to fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the end of President Donald Trump’s term. The sweeping tax and spending bill made ICE the wealthiest law enforcement agency in American history.
That pool of money has been used to purchase new “turnkey” facilities for immigration detention, as well as the planned purchase of immigration enforcement tools such as electric gloves and robot dogs.
ICE has also moved forward with some additional detention capacity, including the recent signing of a new contractor to manage the operations of a new ICE warehouse in San Antonio for $17 million, according to government contracting records.
