Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are running a mass deportation machine defined by cruelty, lawlessness, and deaths. Flush with billions in congressional funding, ICE is accelerating their indiscriminate surge into cities and towns nationwide, prioritizing random arrests over human life, tearing families and communities apart, and pushing workers out of their jobs. That surge and purge has now turned deadly, with federal agents fatally shooting two fathers on their way to work just in the last week, with no end in sight. Trump’s own border czar Tom Homan admitted that there will be “more bloodshed” to justify the shootings. Under Trump, more than 53 people have died due to ICE force or under ICE custody.
Here’s what the record shows:
A Nationwide Surge, City by City
- In Chicago, Illinois, ICE has shifted from mass sweeps to more targeted operations, but arrests continue at the same pace, with at least 20 people arrested last week.
- In Kansas City, Missouri, a local advocacy hotline confirmed at least 30 ICE arrests across the metro in one month, concentrated in communities that are home to some of the region’s largest Hispanic and immigrant populations.
- In Gallatin County, Montana, community organizers estimate that more than 100 people were detained in a single week of raids, part of a broader nationwide surge in arrests timed around the holiday weekend.
- In Wisconsin, federal agents arrested 57 people in just three days between June 29 and July 1.
- In the Puget Sound region, Washington, arrests have jumped from two or three a day earlier this year to as many as ten a day in recent weeks.
- In East Tennessee, ICE announced 117 arrests in a single targeted operation across Sevier County, following weeks of mounting fear in the area’s Hispanic community.
- In Ruckersville, Virginia, 49 people were detained in a joint operation between ICE and the Greene County Sheriff’s Department in June, the same time The New York Times reported on the 10,000 arrests in over two weeks.
Most People Being Swept Up Have No Criminal Record
- As of the most recent data from April 2026, 70.8% of all immigrants detained by ICE have no criminal convictions.
- In Texas, government arrest data analyzed by the Deportation Data Project shows that over a recent 12-month period, ICE arrested more than 38,100 immigrants with no criminal convictions or pending charges, more than the combined number of people arrested with convictions and pending charges.
- In Homestead and West Palm Beach, Florida, a local immigrant advocacy organization reports that 71% of those recently detained have no criminal history. These are people simply living their daily lives while trying to work, seek asylum, or adjust their status.
The Surge Is Only Getting Deadlier
- The death count is increasing during ICE traffic stops, but Trump reversed the order from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to freeze ICE traffic stops, saying, “We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”
- In Houston, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction owner who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years with no criminal record, as he drove his crew to a job site. Similarly, he also was not the target of the operation during a traffic stop.
- Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, an ICE agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián, a 25-year-old Colombian delivery worker authorized to work in the U.S. who wasn’t even the target of the operation during a traffic stop. A neighbor said Johan Sebastián’s 3-year-old daughter was steps away and his wife was “screaming and crying” beside his body.
- A day after the Maine shooting, another individual in Florida, a 28-year-old man, died after getting hit by a tractor-trailer after fleeing from ICE.
- Lorenzo and Johan are the third and fourth people fatally shot by federal immigration agents this year, following the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
The Machine Is Expanding, With No End in Sight
- Under Trump’s second presidency, ICE detention center deaths are at an all-time high of 53 deaths. And despite these deaths, the administration is focused on expanding these efforts.
- DHS has spent $1.5 billion to purchase two private detention facilities in California outright, adding over 4,500 beds to its detention capacity.
- In Louisiana, the administration is building a new 528-bed detention facility specifically for migrant families and unaccompanied children, positioned next to an airport hub to speed up deportation flights.
- In Hudson, Colorado, the GEO Group that runs multiple ICE detention facilities around the country announced new plans to expand the Aurora immigration detention facility to a now-closed prison facility. This will increase the capacity by 1,200 beds and will “generate $85 million in annual revenue in the first full year of operations” for GEO Group.
The bottom line: From Chicago to Kansas City, Milwaukee to rural Montana, Houston to Biddeford, Maine, Trump and Miller’s deportation machine is tearing through American cities and towns, arresting people with no criminal record, terrorizing families, and hollowing out communities. Congressional Republicans funded this with no strings attached. We must demand accountability, transparency, and an end to this lawlessness.
