As part of a push to highlight immigration enforcement efforts during President Donald Trump's first 100 days back in office, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested an eye-popping number of undocumented immigrants: 151,000.
"These numbers have already surpassed the entirety of Fiscal Year 2024, and we're just 100 days into this administration," the department stated in a press release on Monday.
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The next day, the number from DHS had jumped to 158,000 arrests.
DHS did not respond to questions about how it arrived at those figures. Experts who've tracked immigration enforcement for years doubt the arrests are anywhere near that high.
"For the agency to hit 158,000 arrests in 100 days would mean that you'd have to see double the level of ICE arrests that we are seeing now, in fact, more than twice the amount of arrests that ICE is actually carrying out," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "That would be a level of ICE arrests inside the nation that we've never seen in history."
In its own news release, ICE said it had made 66,463 arrests in President Trump's first 100 days.
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That figure aligns with ICE data reviewed by Scripps News in a spreadsheet maintained for Congress, which shows more than 70,000 immigrants booked into detention centers so far this year.
It is far below the numbers shared by DHS, but still a significant amount of arrests, averaging more than the Biden administration, but not as many as during the Obama presidency or Trump's first term in office.
