ICE Is Arresting Latino Immigrants at Up to 115 Times the Rate of Others — Here's What New Data Shows
Key Takeaways:
- A Nicaraguan immigrant faces ICE arrest odds 115 times greater than someone born in India, according to a national analysis of 252,571 federal arrest records released in December 2025.
- Nationally, almost 70% of people arrested by ICE have no criminal conviction, according to the report's co-author.
- Miami's ICE field office has logged more arrests than any other in the country — more than 41,000 since Trump's second term began — while a Houston traffic stop that turned fatal shows the risk of the shift toward street arrests.
A Nicaraguan immigrant faces ICE arrest odds 115 times greater than someone born in India, according to a national analysis of federal enforcement records released in December 2025. The pattern repeats across every major Latino population center in the country, and for families in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Miami, the disparity shows up as relatives who no longer walk to the corner store alone.
The National Numbers: A Pattern That Crosses Every Border
The analysis, led by the New York Immigration Coalition together with economics researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, examined 252,571 federal arrest records, stacking Trump's first six months back in office against Biden's last year in the White House. Latino non-citizens of nearly every nationality show up in the data at rates far beyond their share of the population, even after researchers adjusted for group size. Ecuadorans, for instance, make up a tiny sliver of New York's non-citizen population yet account for roughly a quarter of arrests there. Men make up the overwhelming majority of those detained nationwide despite being roughly half of all immigrants. One of the report's co-authors, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, summed up the pattern this way to amNewYork: "Almost 70% of people who are arrested have no criminal conviction."
New York: Home and Street Stops Outnumber Jail Pickups Five to One
Central and South American immigrants make up about a quarter of New York's non-citizen population but three-quarters of ICE arrests there, the coalition's data show. Arrests made at homes, job sites and on sidewalks now outnumber jail and courthouse pickups by roughly five to one in New York, compared with a near-even split nationally. Even so, the city's daily arrest pace has lagged other metros, something the researchers warn could shift quickly if federal resources are redirected there.
Los Angeles: A Preview of What a Full-Scale Surge Looks Like
Los Angeles shows what happens when that redirection occurs. Arrests there climbed to a rolling average of roughly 100 a day during last summer's surge, with a single-day record of 228 arrests on July 11, more than double New York's pace, according to the coalition's analysis. The human cost showed up on video in June of last year, when agents detained 48-year-old Arturo Vasquez, a father with no criminal record, while he was there simply as a paying customer, getting the family car washed at a business in Culver City. His teenage son was recorded pleading with the agents moments before his father was driven away.
Chicago: The "Worst of the Worst" Campaign That Fell Short of Its Billing
Chicago's surge arrived under the banner of Operation Midway Blitz, a 68-day push that federal officials promised would target dangerous criminals living in the country illegally. A Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ data review found that roughly eight of every ten people held during the operation had no criminal conviction at all. Enforcement in the city has not disappeared since the blitz wound down last fall; legal aid groups tracking activity on the Southwest Side counted at least 20 arrests in one week this past July and 17 more in the partial week that followed, concentrated in the Back of the Yards neighborhood along with nearby Brighton Park and Gage Park.
Houston: A Deadly Stop Reflects a Statewide Shift
In Houston, the monthly average of arrests made away from jails and courthouses jumped from about 150 under Biden to more than 640 during the first 13 months of Trump's second term, now accounting for nearly a third of local ICE arrests, up from 16%, according to a Texas Tribune data analysis. The share of Houston arrestees with an actual conviction fell from 61% to 39% over the same stretch. That shift turned fatal in July, when an agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three who had called Houston home for 35 years and carried no criminal record, during an attempted traffic stop. An Ohio State immigration law professor described the kind of encounter that led to his death as having become "increasingly common — but also increasingly violent." The Department of Homeland Security disputed the underlying dataset, accusing researchers of trying "to peddle a false narrative."
Miami: The Nation's Busiest Enforcement Hub
No ICE field office has logged more arrests than Miami's, which oversees Florida along with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and has been averaging roughly 120 arrests a day, pushing its cumulative total past 41,000 since Trump's second term began, roughly a third above the next-busiest office, in Dallas. Miami-Dade County is more than 54% foreign-born, the highest such share of any county nationwide. The pattern predates this year's numbers: in a case from the spring of 2025 that drew heavy South Florida coverage, Cuban national Eduardo Nuñez Gonzalez was detained by agents outside his North Miami home as he carried a bag of household trash to the curb; his family said he had no history of criminal charges, and he ultimately chose deportation to Spain rather than remain in a New Mexico facility for months.
What's at Stake for Local Economies
The coalition projects that mass deportations carried out at the administration's stated pace could wipe out close to half a million positions across New York's economy alone, including 150,000 in construction — a preview of the kind of disruption that Latino-owned businesses in all five cities describe as workers grow wary of job sites, storefronts and even school drop-off lines.
