Federal immigration agents took more than 10,000 people into custody over a five-day stretch at the close of June, a tally first reported by The New York Times and corroborated by The Associated Press using figures supplied to UC Berkeley's Deportation Data Project. That pace — north of 2,000 arrests a day — is roughly double what officers were logging earlier in 2026, when the daily count hovered closer to 1,000. Arrests peaked at more than 2,400 in a single day on a Saturday at the end of June, and the population held in ICE facilities jumped by nearly 4,000 in a matter of days, crossing 63,000 as of the following Tuesday.
Three officials briefed on internal conversations told the Times that the push to raise numbers came directly from the White House, and that agency leadership has settled on 2,000 arrests a day as the new baseline. One added that nobody inside the agency is certain how long that pace can hold. Field supervisors were instructed to keep as many officers as possible working all seven days of the week and to devote 80 percent of personnel to arrest operations rather than other duties.
