NYT: ICE arrests soaring under Mullin, and pace is picking up daily

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After his confirmation this spring, the secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, promised quieter but more effective enforcement. ICE now appears closer than ever to meeting a recent goal of 2,000 daily arrests.

“They have more officers, more money, more detention space, more local partners and better systems,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official. “And they’re finally putting all the pieces together to build out this deportation machine.”

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Immigration arrests are near all-time highs in almost every state. Even sparsely populated Montana and Vermont saw spikes, with arrest rates more than doubling.

But the surge was strongest in Florida and Texas, two states with large unauthorized immigrant populations and leaders friendly to the Trump administration’s crackdown.

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ICE appears to be hitting new arrest records in a couple of ways: The agency has hired thousands more agents — growing to 29,000 employees in June, up from about 21,000 when Mr. Trump took office, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. And it has relied more on state and local law enforcement partners.

ICE has rapidly expanded a program to deputize local police officers to arrest immigrants. The share of people detained through the program, known as 287(g), is now around 14 percent, the data shows.

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Under Mr. Mullin’s tenure, the number of people in ICE detention initially declined but has slowly ticked back up.

The agency has not yet reached its stated goal of 100,000 detention beds, but with several new detention facilities opening this fall — and the possibility of reviving a plan to convert warehouses into detention centers — it appears poised to expand detention significantly in the next year.

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