Washington, D.C. — New figures released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests have dropped 14 percent nationwide, raising questions about the effectiveness of the federal government’s latest immigration enforcement strategies.
The data reveals that ICE’s daily average arrests fell from 1,124 in June to 1,055 in August — well below the 3,000 daily arrests President Trump ordered last May. This decline comes despite the administration’s high-profile deployment of National Guard and military personnel in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., along with the diversion of thousands of FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Marshals investigators to assist ICE.
Rather than boosting arrests, critics say the approach has proven counter-productive. ICE detention numbers, meanwhile, have risen slightly, but watchdogs caution the agency’s figures are incomplete. The number of detention centers ICE reports using fell from 201 in June to 186 in August, even as the agency seeks to expand its reach by tapping state facilities and military bases.
Among TRAC’s August 2025 highlights:
61,226 noncitizens were held in ICE detention as of August 24.
70.3 percent (43,021 people) had no criminal convictions; many of those convicted had only minor violations such as traffic offenses.
Texas detention facilities continue to house the largest numbers.
In July, 31,273 people were booked into ICE detention — 27,475 by ICE and 3,798 by CBP.
Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi has averaged 2,170 detainees daily, the highest in FY 2025.
182,584 families and single individuals are under ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) programs, with San Francisco supervising the largest caseload.
Satnam Singh Chahal, Executive Director of the North American Punjabi Association (NAPA), said the findings underscore how immigration enforcement continues to target the wrong people.
“Locking up thousands of immigrants who have never committed a crime — or at most a traffic offense — is not justice, it’s persecution,” Chahal said. “Instead of making communities safer, these policies destroy families, traumatize children, and waste vast public resources. What is more telling is that even after deploying the military and draining resources from other agencies, the administration has failed to achieve its own stated goals. This proves that such harsh measures don’t work.”
Chahal urged the administration to “end mass detentions, stop criminalizing immigrants, and focus on comprehensive immigration reform that protects human rights while addressing genuine security concerns.”
With ICE arrests declining and public scrutiny growing, the TRAC report is likely to intensify pressure on the White House to rethink its enforcement-first immigration agenda