In an effort to carry out President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign, arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have shot up this year.
Nationally, ICE arrests have more than doubled compared to last year, according to a New York Times analysis. The rate is sitting at an average of 666 arrests per day, compared to fewer than 300 per day in 2024.
Looking at Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to lead the way in the immigration crackdown, those numbers have tripled.
About 64 immigration arrests a day have been made statewide since Jan. 20 of this year. That's compared to 20 arrests a day in 2024.
And it makes Florida only second in the nation when it comes to the daily arrest rate. Texas leads with 142 daily arrests.
The ICE data, obtained by The Deportation Data Project, displays individual arrests through June 10. WUSF condensed this information to show weekly and monthly arrests in the following graphs.
Another look at the numbers shows that more and more people with no criminal background are being arrested. At the beginning of June, noncriminal arrests have surpassed the arrests of people with criminal charges or convictions.
That was also the case for the week of April 21, during a statewide immigration crackdown called Operation Tidal Wave.
The weeklong operation resulted in what the state called "1,120 criminal illegal alien arrests — the largest number in a single state in one week in ICE's history."
However, not everyone swept up in the operation had a criminal record.
The state said that 63% of those arrested had "existing criminal arrests or convictions."
Note that that number includes arrests made by agencies other than ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (which is what the data represents), like U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and ICE's separate Homeland Security Investigations.
Operation Tidal Wave coincided with increased reports from immigration attorneys and advocates that people were being arrested at their government mandated check-ins.
On April 22, Heidy Sánchez, a Cuban mother, was separated from her 1-year-old daughter during her appointment at the Tampa ICE office and deported to Cuba within two days.
Sánchez, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was in the process of applying for permanent residency, or a green card. She was given a deportation order during a time when Cuba was not taking back its nationals.
Instead, she was given an I-220B Order of Supervision, which allowed her to live and work in the U.S. as long as she checked in periodically with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
People like her, who had no other violations on their record besides the immigration offense, were considered a low priority for deportation.
But in an effort to reach its deportation goals, the administration has broadened the types of immigrants who can be arrested, according to immigration experts.
Paul Chavez, an immigration attorney with the nonprofit law firm Americans for Immigrant Justice, said he's received more reports from community members about ICE sightings in neighborhoods and at immigration court and offices.
"What we've seen is a pretty big increase in arrests of folks that would have not have been arrested under previous administrations, which I think gives light to any statements that there was going to be a priority for people who had committed crimes," Chavez said.
In May, which is the most recent month with full data, noncriminal arrests have nearly doubled in the state.
Chavez pointed out that even arrests of people with criminal charges or convictions require further examination.
A report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that more than 90% of those booked by ICE were "neither violent nor property crime offenders."
The most serious convictions, the report said, were "usually either an immigration offense, a traffic infraction or a nonviolent vice crime."
"I think the data reveals that it's not the worst of the worst," Chavez said.
Last month, Maria Martinez, a 21-year-old from Sarasota, was arrested by local law enforcement for driving without a license and is being detained in Texas. In Florida, immigrants without legal status are not able to obtain a driver's license.
Chavez said law enforcement presence has increased on Florida's highways. Contracts called 287(g) agreements allow the state's local law agencies to work with ICE on immigration enforcement. And the state leads the nation when it comes to those partnerships.
Immigrants are stopped for traffic infractions, taken into police custody and subsequently detained by ICE.
"So, now, you have somebody that's been here 15 years, working, U.S. citizen children, no criminal background that gets picked up, and then placed in the deportation pipeline," Chavez said.
Taylor Honda contributed to the data gathering in this report.
Copyright 2025 WUSF 89.7