Deportations of individuals arrested within the United States have increased by more than four times during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second term compared to the last six months of the Biden administration, according to a new report from the Deportation Data Project. The study also shows that overall arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have quadrupled, with street arrests in communities rising elevenfold and transfers from criminal custody to ICE immigration custody making up the remainder.
The Deportation Data Project is based at UCLA and UC Berkeley Law School and uses data provided by ICE through October 15, 2025. This analysis was made possible through litigation filed by UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy. The project aims to provide detailed information about U.S. government immigration enforcement practices.
Graeme Blair, professor of political science at UCLA and codirector of the project, said: “When we traced the sources of the ramp-up, we found that it stemmed from ICE adopting less-targeted approaches. Before this administration, ICE often focused its arrests on people convicted of crimes or on specific individuals it had identified. Now ICE is doing something new: It seems to be arresting anyone it can. This is evident in the data because at-large arrests in communities are up by a factor of 11, and arrests of people without any criminal convictions are up by a factor of seven.”
The report notes that changes in detention policy have contributed significantly to these trends. The number of detention beds for those arrested inside the country has roughly tripled due to increased enforcement funding and fewer arrivals at the border—a decline that began under President Biden.
According to researchers, detainees now face a lower chance of release within 60 days—falling from 16% during Biden’s last six months in office to just 3% under Trump’s current term. Meanwhile, deportations within 60 days after initial detention rose from 55% to 69%. Voluntary departures—cases where individuals choose deportation rather than continue fighting their cases—have increased more than twentyfold.
Blair commented on this development: “There’s no way to tell for sure in the data whether someone lost their case or gave up and accepted deportation because they couldn’t stand more time in detention,” he said. “But one clue is that voluntary departures, which are one way to give up, have risen by a factor of over 20.”
Despite these increases, Blair noted that interior deportations remain below administration goals: “This is far from the administration’s target,” he said. “But the number of deported people is unprecedented for this century.”
UCLA plays an important role as an academic institution involved in research projects such as this one through its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. The university has been recognized nationally and internationally for achievements including Nobel laureates and MacArthur Fellows (https://www.ucla.edu/). It operates within a large campus supporting diverse academic activities (https://www.ucla.edu/) and fosters inclusive environments through its programs (https://www.ucla.edu/).
