ICE arrested 10,000 migrants in 5 days during late-June enforcement surge: Report

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 10,000 people in just five days towards the end of last month, marking a significant escalation in President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign.

The figures, obtained by the Associated Press from a person familiar with the data who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not been publicly released, indicate that the administration has sharply intensified immigration enforcement even after moving away from highly publicised raids in major American cities.

The arrests took place between Friday and Tuesday, averaging roughly 2,000 arrests a day. While officials have not disclosed where the operations were conducted, the numbers suggest a substantial increase in enforcement activity under the Trump administration's immigration agenda.

The latest surge comes despite a noticeable shift in strategy. Rather than carrying out large-scale, high-profile crackdowns in individual cities that often drew widespread media attention and public protests, federal authorities have increasingly relied on lower-profile operations to pursue deportation targets. Even with the quieter approach, the pace of arrests has continued to climb.

The rise in arrests has also been accompanied by a growing number of detainees in ICE custody.

According to information obtained by the Associated Press, the number of people held in ICE detention facilities rose to around 39,000 in June after remaining close to 30,000 a month since February, pointing to increased immigration enforcement across the country.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security defended the intensified operations, saying, "Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump's promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists.

Our message is clear: if you come to our country illegally, we will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you."

ICE does not routinely publish detailed arrest figures, making direct comparisons with previous periods difficult.

However, data provided to the UC Berkeley Deportation Data Project and analysed by the Associated Press shows that the latest average of about 2,000 arrests per day represents a sharp increase over earlier months.

For comparison, December recorded the highest average daily arrests since the beginning of the Trump administration, at 1,283 nationwide.

In January, when immigration authorities deployed hundreds of enforcement officers across Minneapolis and surrounding areas, arrests averaged approximately 1,212 a day.

By February, daily arrests had dropped to 1,057, according to the Deportation Data Project, which obtained ICE records through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The project's publicly available data currently extends only through February.

The administration's enforcement strategy evolved following protests in Minneapolis, where two American citizens were killed during demonstrations against immigration raids.

The incident prompted Border Adviser Tom Homan to reduce the number of immigration officers deployed in Minnesota, signalling a move away from the highly visible operations that characterised the tenure of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Those operations, overseen by former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, frequently resulted in confrontations between immigration officers and protesters, with videos of the incidents widely shared on the department's social media platforms.

Following Noem's departure, her successor, Markwayne Mullin, indicated that the department would adopt a lower-profile approach while continuing to implement Trump's immigration priorities.

The latest figures suggest that although the administration has reduced the visibility of immigration enforcement operations, the scale of arrests has accelerated significantly.

With detention numbers also rising, the data points to an intensified deportation campaign that is likely to remain central to the administration's immigration strategy in the coming months.