Austin Kocher very helpfully provides insights into the Biden era pattern of ICE enforcement action by the United States, to serve as a baseline for the Trump administration.
Arrests: During FY 2024 there were on daily average of 310 ICE arrests and daily average of 409 ICE detainers served. A detainer is a request by ICE to state or local law enforcement to detain or otherwise keep ICE informed of a person who has been arrested in kept in custody. (These figures show how much ICE depends on state and local law enforcement.)
Trump is implicitly promising that these numbers will skyrocket.
In detention: as of mid-January: 40,000. Trump is promising that this number will skyrocket. Out of detention but monitored (mainly by technology) as of mid-January, 188,000. On its face, Trump’s executive orders and rhetoric would require all of these persons to be detained since they are per Trump criminals.
ACTION SO FAR; it is unrealistic to expect that arrest and detention numbers will have grown in the first week of the administration’s lifetime. Btu shall we expect perhaps 1,000 arrests a day by the end of February?
Kocher notes, “There simply are not enough immigrants in the country with criminal convictions to enable the Trump admin to massively grow detention and deportation alone. They will have to go after a growing number of immigrants with no criminal histories.”
Deportations: Kocher does not address deportations. In FY 2024, there were 270,000 deportations, or about 700 per day. During Trump 1, there were about 1.5 million deportations or about 1,000 a day.
Here is a mid 2024 analysis of deportation trends. This analysis raises an important point, which is that most removals are voluntary and not in the custody of law enforcement.