In May, President Donald Trump's administration directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day. To meet this quota, ICE has resorted to arresting people who pose no risk to public safety.
New data shared by the Cato Institute revealed that 65 percent of people taken by ICE had no previous convictions, and 93 percent had no violent convictions. Since the beginning of 2025, ICE arrests have increased from an average of 215 to 1,100 per day. One tactic used by the agency to increase arrests is targeting law-abiding immigrants during routine appointments, which happened to Paola Clouatre in May.
Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national, came to the United States with her mother more than a decade ago seeking asylum. After meeting Adrian Clouatre in 2022, during his final months of military service, the two married last year. Shortly after, Clouatre began the process of obtaining her green card to live and work in the U.S. legally. But during the green card process, she learned that ICE had issued a deportation order against her in 2018 after her estranged mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing in California—something her husband says she had "no idea" about.
