ICE made 400,000 arrests in 14 months; Black, Latinx and immigrant neighborhoods bore the brunt

Read a PDF of our statement here.

A new data tool issued by the Legal Defense Fund's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) reveals how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is infiltrating cities and neighborhoods to widen its enforcement dragnet.

Tracking ICE's Expanding Reach uses ICE's own data to document over 400,000 arrests across all fifty states in the first 14 months of the Trump administration. TMI's resource also takes a deeper dive into Nashville, Los Angeles, Chicago, Columbus, and Minneapolis to understand local level repercussions on immigration enforcement.

"The Trump administration has created a 'prison-to-deportation pipeline' where a routine traffic stop in a Black or Latinx neighborhood becomes a death knell for a person's immigration status," said Karla McKanders, Director of the Thurgood Marshall Institute. "By deputizing local police through section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, ICE has turned traffic stops into a racialized weapon of mass exclusion. We cannot separate today's enforcement practices from the historical racism of our immigration laws, where 'dark skin' was used as a pretext for a stop."

As the resource explores the harmful impacts of DHS' violent and racialized tactics, it also puts forth questions about the expansion of the enforcement dragnet and the narrowing of who counts as truly belonging to this nation. Some highlights include:

Expanded and systemized racial profiling: Legal advocates have documented agents using perceived race, ethnicity, and accent as a basis for investigative stops, leading many Black and Latinx citizens to carry their passports or birth certificates out of fear of wrongful arrest. Racially profiled citizens and permanent residents have been tackled to the ground, restrained, detained, and had the validity of their documents challenged.

Targeting of Black and Latinx neighborhoods: Patterns across Nashville, Los Angeles, Chicago, Columbus, and Minneapolis reveal the systemic and consistent targeting of majority Black or Latinx neighborhoods with increasingly militarized raids and sweeps.

Unprecedented scale: ICE made nearly 400,000 arrests across the US in the first 14 months of the Trump administration, conducting 11 times as many street arrests and 7 times as many arrests of people without a criminal conviction compared to the final months of the Biden Administration.

Intensified use of force: Observers have documented agents smashing car windows, dragging people out of vehicles, deploying chemical weapons and stun grenades against protesters, as well as knee-on-neck restraints. There have also been at least 20 shootings, including the two fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Access the data tool here.

Learn more about LDF's work to end DHS abuses and violence by federal law enforcement here.

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights legal organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957, though it was founded under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall while he was at the NAACP. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) is a division of LDF that undertakes innovative research and houses LDF's archive. In all media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF (do not include NAACP) and refer to the Institute as LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute or TMI.