The Trump administration dramatically increased deportations by arresting migrants on American streets, often without criminal records, according to a new report.
The Deportation Data Project's report, released on Jan. 27, shows the sweeping effects of U.S. Immigration and Enforcement tactics within U.S. borders. Deportations stemming from ICE arrests quadrupled, while street arrests alone increased 11 times.
"The crackdown is bigger than what it would seem," David Hausman, a University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of law and codirector of the Deportation Data Project, a repository of federal immigration enforcement data, told USA TODAY. He pointed to large increases in arrests within the United States, which often get conflated with arrests at the border that have dwindled dramatically under Trump.
Rather than prior targeted tactics arresting specific people or those convicted of crimes, ICE appeared to arrest any undocumented person they could in American communities, according to the report's authors.
“When we traced the sources of the ramp-up, we realized that it all started with ICE targeting its arrests less,” Graeme Blair, a University of California, Los Angeles, political science professor and codirector of the Deportation Data Project, said in a statement.
