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Tracking administrative arrests by ICE through the Biden, Trump presidencies, in Chicago and nationwide

How do ICE administrative arrests compare under Trump, Biden administrations?
How do ICE administrative arrests compare under Trump, Biden administrations? 02:38

CHICAGO (CBS) -- This past weekend, news and social media posts abounded about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers attempting to carry out arrests in the Chicago area and beyond.

The images have been everywhere as part of a display by federal officers conducting what are called targeted administrative arrests. Such arrests largely went unnoticed in recent years, but on Sunday, there was definitely an uptick in numbers — to the tune of about 1,000 nationwide.

So CBS News Chicago went searching for yearly and daily averages for such enforcement actions over the past eight years, so as to determine how often such a federal crackdown really happens in any given year or day.

Over the weekend, ICE officers were spread throughout the Chicago area looking to make arrests. They were captured on Ring cameras, as was the case for an arrest in Cicero, and cellphones, as happened in Lyons.

The man who took cellphone video in Lyons — and asked ICE officers to leave his property — was not the target ICE was looking for. But police sources said another man was taken away there as part of what is called an administrative arrest by ICE.

From Chicago to Denver, Houston and Miami it was one of the nearly 1,000 ice arrests made on Sunday nationwide — about three times the single day average for ICE.

CBS News Chicago set out to compare the data on ICE arrests over the last eight years — starting in 2017 during President Trump's first administration, and continuing through former President Joe Biden's administration, which ended this month.

The CBS News Chicago investigators data team found President Trump's largest single year for ICE arrests came in 2018, with 158,581 ICE arrests nationwide for the year and a daily average of 434.

In comparison Biden's largest year was in 2023. The data shows ICE made 1,000 more such arrests a month than during the Trump administration — with a total of 170,570 arrests and an average of 467 per day.

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CBS

The magnitude of the 2025 numbers will not be clear until more time has passed. If these arrests continue as they are, the numbers for President Trump's second term could be unprecedented.

These figures represent just arrests. They are not actual deportation numbers, though the CBS News Chicago Investigators are gathering data about deportation trends too.

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