ICE arrests in Virginia soar under Trump crackdowns

The Trump administration's enforcement has targeted thousands of foreign nationals - most from Central and South America and without criminal records.

By Kunle Falayi

Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made 4,264 arrests in Virginia in the first seven months of the year, nearly three times the number for the entire previous year, according to an analysis of federal court records.

That figure exceeds the combined total of ICE arrests in Virginia during the same seven-month period across each of the four previous years, from 2021 through 2024, according to the Deportation Data Project, a nonprofit research collective based at UC Berkeley.

Nationwide, ICE has arrested over 142,000 immigrants between January and July, including a peak of over 30,000 in June. By comparison, since 2012 the high mark of monthly ICE arrests was roughly 26,000 in March 2012.

In these data visualizations, VCIJ at WHRO breaks down what immigration enforcement has been like under President Donald Trump’s administration. 

About 872,000 immigrants live in Virginia, according to federal and independent estimates. More than 6% of the state’s population are temporary workers and immigrants – lawful permanent residents, nonimmigrants, asylees and refugees – a population that has remained largely the same in the decade. Another 3.7% of the state's population is undocumented immigrants, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center estimate.

Virginia ranks among the top ten for immigration arrests per capita, with roughly 490 arrests for every 100,000 documented and undocumented immigrants from January through July.

The Deportation Data Project is a team of researchers based at the UC Berkeley School of Law. It collects, links and documents anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets. It makes the information available to the media, researchers, lawyers, and policymakers. Through a FOIA lawsuit brought against ICE by the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, the collective acquired data on removals, detention, apprehensions and encounters.

Nationwide, daily arrests are 150% higher than a year ago.  But after surging to a record average of more than 1,200 a day in June, the numbers began to drop in late June, according to the Deportation Data Project’s analysis. The downward trend carried through July, even as ICE added more agents.

Data from the Deportation Data Project, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, may be the only publicly available source that provides a detailed look at ICE enforcement activities on a case-by-case level. The anonymized data includes arrest date, location, any past criminal records, country of origin, age and other case information.  

An analysis of this data by VCIJ at WHRO shows that arrests in Virginia mirrored national patterns — climbing sharply to a daily average of about 34 at the height of the surge in June and declining through July.

UC Berkeley Law Professor David Hausman, who leads the Deportation Data Project, said the drop in arrests may partly be linked to a July ruling by the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The court issued a temporary restraining order that barred the Department of Homeland Security from engaging in illegal profiling.

ICE has, in some cases, arrested lawful permanent residents and even some U.S. citizens who were later released.

Since the beginning of the immigration clampdown by the Trump administration, the focus of ICE arrests has remained the same: targeted individuals are predominantly from Central and South America. Data from the Department of Homeland Security shows that most undocumented immigrants are from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. 

Most immigrants arrested in Virginia have not been convicted of any crimes and do not have pending criminal charges. About 29% of all those arrested by ICE in the state between January and July had convictions, and less than 16% had pending criminal charges. 

The American Civil Liberties Union has said ICE arrests and political rhetoric often criminalize the undocumented population and has criticized terms like “criminal alien.”

Asylum seekers have also fared poorly in Virginia.

An analysis by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Clearing House shows that immigrants have more frequently been denied asylum in Virginia’s three immigration courts in Arlington, Annandale and Sterling.

In fact, in July 2024, approval rates were nearly 50%. Just a year later, approvals had plummeted to just a little above 20%.

Hausman said changes to asylum law, along with personnel shifts, may explain the higher denial rates.

“There has been some relatively significant turnover among immigration judges,” he said. “The make-up of the Board of Immigration Appeals has changed substantially.”

In September 2024, there were 735 immigration judges in the country. There are now 685 judges, according to data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system. 

The Trump administration has also signaled plans to shut down the asylum system and restrict access for people seeking refuge at the U.S.-Mexico border. And in July, the Board of Immigration Appeals published a decision that the American Immigration Council said will make it harder for people to qualify for asylum based on the claim of gender-based violence.

Between January and July, Virginia immigration courts decided more than 6,000 asylum cases. Nationals of Honduras and El Salvador make up nearly 1 in three applicants in those cases.

Reach Kunle Falayi at Kunle.Falayi@vcij.org or @whro.org.