ICE detainment reach second-term high for Trump administration: Report

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained almost 50,000 people in July, marking its highest monthly arrest total during President Trump’s second term, newly released data shows.

According to numbers published in the Deportation Data Project — a joint project conducted by the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles — ICE arrested 49,571 people in July 2026. A Monday Associated Press analysis noted that the figure marked a surge in detainments, jumping by 15 percent from the month prior.

For the majority of 2026, detention numbers stagnated around the lower 30,000 range. Detainments in July jumped by 70 percent from when this plateau began in February.

Since the Trump administration’s February immigration crackdown in Minnesota, called Operation Metro Surge , ICE and Customs and Border Protection have expanded their enforcement across the country. The agencies have also invested heavily in their officers as President Trump rolls back deportation protections for several migrant groups.

Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, the wife of Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, was deported Monday — marking the seventh spouse or parent of an active-duty military member who was removed from the country.

“I don’t know if I will be able to continue with this,” Turcios Juarez told the AP. “I have to make a plan to make sure I can still fulfill my military responsibilities — but also take care of my family.”

Navy sailor Joshua Aviles — currently serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln , which earlier this month faced scrutiny for declining living conditions — similarly reported that his father had been detained by ICE. After Aviles’s social media pleas, his father was released from custody Wednesday.

“I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly being treated like a criminal,” the sailor wrote in his initial post.

ICE also deported more than 160 immigrants to Haiti last week, acting on a June Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for around 330,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians.

But polls suggest public approval of ICE’s expanded efforts is dwindling. In early August, the AP and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that Americans’ approval of Trump’s handling of immigration had dropped by 10 percentage points since the start of his second term, reaching a 58 percent disapproval rate.

An earlier New York Times/Siena poll , published in January, found that nearly half of respondents said they believed Trump had “ gone too far ” in restricting legal immigration.