U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made more than 10,000 arrests in just five days as part of a crackdown on immigration driven by President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a report published by The New York Times, based on internal documents and testimony from federal officials.
According to the report, the agency significantly increased the pace of arrests compared to the first few months of the year. While ICE was making about 1,000 arrests per day in early 2026, the figure currently stands at around 2,000 per day—a target that, according to three officials consulted by the newspaper, was set at the request of the White House.
ICE arrests 10000 immigrants in just five days
The report notes that ICE’s national headquarters instructed its regional offices to step up efforts to locate and detain individuals who might be subject to deportation proceedings.
These actions include operations on public roads, traffic inspections, and immigration checks carried out in various communities across the country.
Unlike the large-scale operations that received widespread media coverage in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles in previous months, the new strategy has been carried out more discreetly.
According to The New York Times, the change is a response to the criticism sparked by the high-profile raids and aims to maintain a steady pace of arrests without drawing public attention to a single location.
However, one of the officials quoted by the newspaper cautioned that there is still uncertainty about how long this level of activity can be sustained, given the operational and resource constraints the agency faces.
The increase in arrests comes as President Trump continues to make accelerating the deportation of people residing in the United States without immigration authorization one of the priorities of his second term.
The intensification of these operations also coincides with recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding immigration policy.
Although the Supreme Court expanded the executive branch’s discretion to enforce immigration measures in some cases, it also ruled that citizenship by birth remains protected under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution for children born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents or parents with temporary status.
So far, ICE has not issued an official report detailing the geographic distribution of these more than 10,000 detentions or the profile of the individuals arrested over the past five days.
However, immigrant rights organizations have reiterated their call for communities to be aware of their rights and to seek legal advice if they face immigration proceedings.
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