Texas Accounted for About 1 in 4 ICE Arrests During Trump’s Crackdown

(TEXAS) One in four Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests nationwide took place in Texas during President Trump’s renewed immigration crackdown in 2025, making the state the epicenter of federal enforcement actions this year. From the inauguration in January 2025 through July 29, 2025, ICE made 138,068 arrests across the United States, with Texas accounting for 24% of the total, or about 33,136 arrests. The scale and pace of ICE arrests Texas drew in that span underscore how the Trump immigration crackdown has reshaped daily life in the state’s cities and counties, with ripple effects from border communities to major urban jails.

Texas led all states in arrests, outpacing Florida, which recorded 11% of the national total, and California, which accounted for 8%. The surge marked a sharp break from the previous administration. Average daily arrests in Texas more than doubled, rising from 85 a day under former President Biden to 176 a day under Trump. Overall, Texas arrests increased 130% compared with the prior administration, a jump that ICE officials credited to broadened enforcement and that immigrant advocates described as aggressive and unusually sweeping. The Harris County Jail in Houston, the largest county jail in Texas, emerged as the single busiest site for ICE detainers in the country, while jails in Dallas, Bexar, and Travis counties also ranked among the top 10 for ICE activity.

Beyond the raw totals, ICE changed where and how it carried out arrests. Community-based arrests—operations in public spaces, homes, and workplaces—rose 255% and made up 42% of all arrests during Trump’s first months back in office, according to data reviewed by legal observers. Agents picked up people at worksites, immigration courts, commercial parking lots, and private homes, with reports from Texas attorneys and advocacy groups describing teams wearing masks and, in some cases, using force to take people into custody. That shift pushed enforcement out of jails and into neighborhoods and job sites, intensifying fear in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin and fueling a new round of questions about due process and civil liberties.

Houston immigration lawyer Paul Pirela said clients and their families were facing rapid removals and fewer chances to fight their cases.

“The Trump administration’s strategy is simple: ‘Deport as many people as possible and as fast as possible,’”
said Pirela, who described the recent spikes in ICE detainers at the Harris County Jail and street arrests across the metro area as “unlike anything we’ve seen in years.” His account matches the numbers: in Texas, the steep rise in community arrests coincided with growing detainer activity inside county facilities, with the Harris County Jail leading the nation by volume.

The profile of those arrested also shifted. The share of people taken into custody who had not been convicted of a crime increased from 42% under Biden to 59% under Trump, the data show. That change, paired with the move into more public arrest locations, brought a wider array of long-settled residents and mixed-status families into contact with ICE. Officials, however, argued that the larger sweep still focused on safety. On Oct. 30, 2025, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said:

“70% of illegal aliens ICE has arrested have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. And that doesn’t even account for those wanted for violent crimes in their country of origin or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists. The list goes on. The media continues to act as a PR firm for criminals.”
Her statement captured the chasm between federal messaging and what defense lawyers say they see in courtrooms and detention centers across Texas.

Detention capacity grew to meet the pace of arrests. As of September 15, 2025, 32,364 people were in ICE custody in Texas facilities, a concentration that reflected the state’s central role in immigration enforcement this year. Nationally, ICE’s detention population climbed from 39,000 in January 2025 to a record 61,000 in late 2025, straining bed space and legal services in Texas and other states. The rising headcount mirrored policy decisions inside ICE to lengthen detention in certain cases and to fold more people picked up in community operations into federal custody rather than alternatives like parole or regular check-ins.

Inside Texas, the geographic footprint of arrests revealed how enforcement spread from county jails to daily life. In Houston, the Harris County Jail’s position at the top of the national list of ICE detainers highlighted the reach of cooperation agreements between local jails and federal officers. In Dallas County, Bexar County, and Travis County, sheriff’s offices reported consistent handoffs of people in their custody to ICE, keeping those counties among the most active hubs for transfers. At the same time, workplace operations and home arrests drove a spike in people with no criminal convictions being taken in by ICE officers who were no longer waiting for local custody transfers to initiate cases.

The broader state-to-state breakdown from Trump’s first months back in office shows how concentrated the surge became. From February through July 2025, Texas recorded 25,885 arrests, or 25% of the U.S. total, followed by Florida with 11,238 arrests (11%) and California with 8,205 arrests (8%). Georgia tallied 4,381 arrests, or 4% of the total, and Virginia had 3,517, roughly 3%. Those five states together accounted for more than half of ICE arrests during that span. In Texas, the jump in statewide numbers aligned with aggressive scheduling of enforcement teams and an expanded focus on targets beyond recent border crossers, according to attorneys tracking arrests in the Houston and Dallas immigration courts.

Communities from the Rio Grande Valley to the Houston suburbs felt the strain. Legal clinics in Harris County saw a rise in families seeking emergency representation for relatives detained after morning raids at job sites and late-night knocks on apartment doors. Advocates said the fastest-growing share of detentions involved Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans, with arrest totals for those nationalities doubling or tripling compared to the previous administration. That shift echoed the geographic realities of migration into Texas and the proximity of ICE field offices to large Central American and Mexican communities around Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Workplace enforcement returned as a central tool. ICE ramped up employer I-9 audits and conducted more workplace raids, a reversal from recent years when civil audit strategies often replaced high-profile operations. The agency redeployed personnel to expand enforcement into new industries and regions, widening its reach beyond traditional targets in construction, hospitality, and food processing. After a senior White House adviser, Stephen Miller, set a target of 3,000 arrests per day in late May 2025, ICE field offices in Texas and Florida intensified planning to boost daily intake, including scheduling early morning and evening operations that would run arrests directly to processing centers before midnight.

Attorneys and researchers tracking ICE arrests Texas encountered new hurdles in following the data. Legal observers reported that the administration had stopped consistently publishing detailed immigration enforcement data that was previously available, and that some historical reports had been deleted from government websites. Without those reports, it became harder to verify weekly arrest totals, detention bed counts by facility, and the mix of criminal and non-criminal cases, pushing lawyers and journalists to rely on scattered disclosures and local courthouse records. ICE maintained basic public summaries and its operational pages, including high-level descriptions of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, but the detailed dashboards that advocates had used to track trends in near real time were no longer updated.

The change in arrest locations drew particular attention from defense attorneys. Instead of waiting at county jails for a release on local charges, agents increasingly appeared outside immigration courtrooms in Houston and San Antonio, and at large retail parking lots where day laborers and service workers gather before shifts. Apartment complexes in Harris County reported midnight visits by agents showing warrants and taking residents into custody, sometimes in front of children. Lawyers said those tactics can leave families without time to arrange care or gather documents, and they throw new cases into an already crowded docket in Houston, which was already among the busiest immigration courts before 2025.

Inside the Harris County Jail, the volume of detainers drove practical changes. Public defenders reported tighter windows to advise clients about potential immigration consequences, because ICE now acted quickly to pick up people as soon as their local charges were resolved or dismissed. With the jail leading the nation in detainer use, officials moved to streamline handoffs, making it more likely that people would be transferred to ICE custody within hours, not days. That speed, combined with the rise in community arrests, compressed the timeline for families to find lawyers and slowed bond hearings in the Houston area courts.

The disparities between federal talking points and local records also hardened the political battle lines. Supporters of the Trump immigration crackdown emphasized the share of arrests involving people with criminal convictions or pending charges, echoing McLaughlin’s statement. Defense attorneys countered with the rising proportion of arrests of people with no convictions—now 59% under Trump compared with 42% under Biden—and pointed to the widespread use of arrest locations far from jails as evidence of a broader net. In Houston’s immigrant neighborhoods, pastors and school counselors described growing anxiety as parents altered routines, avoided public places, and created ad hoc plans for childcare in case a parent did not come home from work.

For Texans living under the latest wave of enforcement, the numbers translated into sudden absences at home and on factory floors. In Harris County, where the jail’s status as the country’s top detainer site placed it at the heart of the federal campaign, families drove to detention centers hours away for visits that lasted minutes, while community groups scrambled to raise bond money amid rising detention populations. In Dallas and San Antonio, small businesses reported losing workers overnight after workplace operations. In Austin, attorneys documented an uptick in arrests outside apartment complexes and local traffic stops leading to rapid ICE transfers.

The overall volume—138,068 arrests nationwide through late July, with Texas responsible for roughly a quarter—shaped strategy for both ICE and its critics. With daily arrests in Texas jumping to 176, field offices adjusted schedules and redeployed agents to maintain the pace. For lawyers and advocates, the priority became tracking clients moving from the Harris County Jail into ICE custody and documenting operations in neighborhoods where agents appeared without notice. As the national detention population hit 61,000 in late 2025, Texas facilities held more than half of those in custody on September 15, 2025, intensifying the state’s central role and elevating the Harris County Jail as a focal point of the debate.

What happens next will depend on policy decisions in Washington and the availability of detention space in Texas. If the late May target of 3,000 arrests per day remains the benchmark, ICE field offices in Texas are likely to keep driving a large share of the national totals. The state’s position as the leader by arrests, coupled with its network of county jails and dedicated detention centers, suggests the Harris County Jail will continue to be a bellwether for federal priorities. For now, the combination of higher arrest rates, broader operations in communities, and tighter timelines inside jails has left Texas families, employers, and county systems to absorb the most intense effects of the campaign. The numbers behind ICE arrests Texas—and the starkly different portraits offered by defense attorneys like Pirela and DHS officials like McLaughlin—show how the Trump immigration crackdown has remade the daily realities of immigration enforcement across the state.