Trump Increases ICE Arrests in Assault on the Working Class

Irina Park & Farrukh Abadi

The Trump administration put in place new arrest quotas for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, among several other changes to immigration laws in the US. Immigration raids and arrests have spiked in some parts of the country, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reporting nearly 9,000 arrests in the first two weeks of Trump’s second term. To boost the number of arrests across the US, federal agents will fly into three cities per week for larger operations in an “all hands on deck” approach. While arrests have sharply increased—especially non-criminal arrests—deportations remain below the average of the Biden administration.

ICE Arrests Expanded to Provoke Sensation and Terror

The Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics include rescinding policies that discouraged arrests at “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship, and delegating enforcement to local police. Such policies aimed at mitigating mass hatred for ICE—something Trump is disregarding with his appeals to the most chauvinist sections of society.

This week, the Trump administration also rescinded a Biden-era extension of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Venezuelan migrants, which would allow ICE to arrest and deport hundreds of thousands more.

While arrests remain high, deportations still lag behind the levels of the Biden administration. Between October-November 2024—the last two months of data currently available on the Biden administrations’ immigration enforcement—there was a daily average of nearly 300 arrests, of which 45 were noncriminal arrests, and around 850 deportations. So far during the Trump administration, there has been a daily average of around 630 arrests, of which roughly 300 are noncriminal, and about 400 deportations a day. In other words, compared to the Biden administration, Trump has carried out more than twice as many arrests, six times as many noncriminal arrests, but less than half the number of deportations.

As usual, the Trump administration is aiming for spectacle to rally his chauvinist social base behind the reactionization of the state and his attacks on workers. This is especially apparent in his grotesque methods of deportation, which includes shackling migrants in military flights to their country of origin that can last as long as 40 hours.

Increasing Executive Power and Militarization in Response to Economic Crisis

Last week, Donald Trump signed the Laken Riley Act, which gives the federal government the power to detain and deport immigrants accused of crimes. The bipartisan act and first piece of legislation approved during Trump’s second term is based on fabricated evidence on so-called “migrant crime”, as studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens.

Trump announced at the signing of the bill that his administration plans to send detained immigrants to a holding center in Guantanamo Bay, a US military base on occupied Cuban land. This plan would bypass due process rights under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, previously used to intern Japanese people in the US during World War II. Already, over a dozen migrants who have been accused of crimes have been sent to the base—not to the holding center, but the prison notoriously used to torture those the US captured in its predatory wars in the Middle East. Trump has suggested that 30,000 migrants could be held on base.

These attacks are a response to the economic crisis of imperialism, terrorizing migrant workers and further stratifying and dividing the working class while making them foot the bill. According to the American Immigration Council, Trump’s plan to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $1 trillion over the span of a decade, funneled from the pockets of working people into the various monopolies contracted with ICE, who have already seen their stocks jump.

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