Ice Has Arrested Over 3,000 People In NJ Since Trump Took Office

By: Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested more than 3,000 people in New Jersey since President Donald Trump took office, the ninth-highest total of any state in the country.

Flush with about $170 billion in new funding from a Republican-written budget law, the Department of Homeland Security has set a goal of deporting 1 million immigrants annually.

From Jan. 21, the administration’s first full day in power, through July, ICE agents have arrested 137,944 people, according to data from the Immigration Enforcement Dashboard, an independent research project.

Of that national total, 3,201 people were arrested during that period in New Jersey. ICE arrests peaked in June at 802 before slowing to 727 in July.

In all of 2024, ICE arrested 2,959 people in New Jersey.

These figures, obtained by a separate group called the Deportation Data Project, provide a glimpse into day-to-day operations at DHS, which does not provide updated arrest statistics.

Asked for comment Wednesday, Chrissy Cuttita, a spokesperson for ICE’s Newark field office, referred to a webpage of arrest data that had not been updated since last year.

The Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers, obtains immigration data, often through the Freedom of Information Act, a federal law that allows the public to request government files and sue for them, too.

Texas, where the administration has expanded its immigration detention footprint, is the state with the most ICE arrests to date, 28,214, as of July.

Two populous states, Florida and California, follow with 12,877 and 10,120 ICE arrests respectively.

New York and Pennsylvania also rank in the top 10 states for ICE arrests from Trump’s first full day in office until July: 4,576 and 2,951.

Nationally, arrests peaked at 30,390 in June, before dropping to 23,617.

The majority of people ICE has arrested nationwide do not possess criminal convictions, according to Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University.

As of Sept. 21, about a third — 34% — of people ICE had arrested and detained had been convicted for criminal charges.

The US immigration court system is far from normal“For the first time since the start of the current Trump administration, immigrants with no criminal convictions make up the objectively largest group of people arrested and detained by ICE,” Kocher said in an analysis of immigration statistics.

“According to the latest data, 16,523 immigrants in detention have no criminal charges or convictions, now the largest of these groups—a significant increase since the previous data points, while those with charges and convictions remained static,” Kocher said. “By contrast, the number of people in detention with criminal charges and convictions is actually down over the past month.

The ongoing federal government shutdown has not halted arrests by ICE or other DHS agents. The overall department has roughly $170 billion it can access, thanks to a new federal law that cut domestic health, food and climate programs and increased spending on the military and hardline immigration policy.

In writing that law, Republicans in Congress also capped the number of judges who can hear immigration cases at a given time at 800, who already face a mountainous backlog of about 4 million cases.

The Pentagon is targeting Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County for immigration agents to hold then deport, by airplane, a minimum of 1,000 to as many as 3,000 undocumented immigrants.

New Jersey lawmakers, including Reps. Donald Norcross (D-1st) and Herb Conaway (D-3rd), have told NJ Spotlight News they have received minimal information on specific plans to use the base for immigration purposes.

Both representatives demanded an in-person briefing following a July letter they sent, along with other New Jersey Democrats, to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, with questions about how the base would be used.