ICE arrests in Northern California have surged this summer, a Chronicle analysis of deportation data shows. That’s in keeping with national trends.
The Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), claimed on Friday that they are “cleaning up the streets,” targeting what they continued to call the “WORST OF THE WORST” — including “illegal alien pedophiles, sex offenders, and violent thugs.”
But the numbers tell a more complicated story.
Since the beginning of 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested roughly 2,640 people in its San Francisco “area of responsibility” — a 123% increase compared to the final seven months of the Biden administration. The pace picked up dramatically in June and July.
That area spans a large portion of California, from Kern County northward, and also includes Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. The Chronicle’s analysis focused only on arrests made within California.
Notably, under the Trump administration, arrests of people without criminal convictions have risen sharply. Many of those taken into custody have only pending criminal charges — or none at all. In June, about 58% of arrests involved individuals with no prior convictions. That figure dipped slightly to 56% in July, but just a few months earlier, the numbers were far lower: In December, before President Donald Trump took office, only 10% of arrests involved people without a criminal conviction.
Among those without a conviction, ICE has arrested a large number of individuals whose only suspected violation is entering the country illegally or overstaying their visa. Although administration officials often call these undocumented immigrants “criminals,” being in the U.S. without legal status is a civil violation, not a crime.
Arrests of convicted criminals are also up, though not as sharply. Those convictions varied widely — from serious and violent crimes like child sexual assault, homicide, and drug trafficking, to lesser charges such as traffic violations and low-level misdemeanors.
ICE officers raided a home in East Oakland on Tuesday and detained at least six people, including a minor and a person with a severe disability, according to an immigration attorney. In June, Oakland police confirmed to the Chronicle that ICE alerted them of its activity, but ICE did not provide additional details.
Also, for the first time in the Bay Area, ICE detained two U.S. citizens during a protest on Aug. 8, outside the agency’s San Francisco field office at 630 Sansome St. Aliya Karmali, an Oakland immigration attorney, told Mission Local that she hasn’t seen “ICE arresting [U.S. citizen] protestors in the Bay since entering the legal field nearly 20 years ago.”
The picture is similar nationwide. National data from the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University indicates that the number of people detained by ICE — excluding those arrested by Customs and Border Protection — saw a 178% increase between Jan. 26 and July 13.
Since the beginning of 2025, ICE arrests of people with no criminal convictions has skyrocketed, with a 370% increase from the end of January to mid-July. In June, ICE held more people for immigration violations than for pending charges for the first time — a trend that continued into July.
Reports indicate that ICE has been targeting workers in mostly Latino neighborhoods and on jobsites — sometimes based on vague tips from people claiming they saw undocumented immigrants, but often with no clear reason at all. It has also arrested thousands of people in public places.
Though the administration views the increased immigration enforcement as necessary for public safety or border security, many believe the arrests are fueling fear, separating families, disrupting labor markets and local economies, and doing little to actually solve the country’s broader immigration problems.
“It seems like they’re just arresting people they think might be in the country without status and amenable to deportation,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, in a June Reuters story.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ice-arrests-deport-data-20818148.php
Women should not be allowed to vote, according to the cult to which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth belongs:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently shared on X an interview with Moscow Pastor Doug Wilson, a key figure in the Christian nationalist movement who argues that women should be subordinate to men – even to the point that they should not be allowed to vote.
The movement has been emboldened by the re-election of President Donald Trump, and the CNN report Hegseth shared details the ongoing effort among Wilson and his allies to gain political power.
And the episode contains another important lesson: That the essential part of Christian nationalism is right-wing nationalism, while Christianity is a secondary, accidental feature.
The point is to gain power for a reactionary kind of political and cultural view – hence the movement’s constant insistence on the submission of women to men; the sympathy for the Old South, even to the point of defending slavery; constant attacks on gay and transgender people; occasionally downplaying the Holocaust and so on – and Christianity is a pretty cloak to wrap that foul project in.
This explains their consistent embrace of individuals who relentlessly exhibit personal debauchery – so long as they have political power – people like Hegseth and Trump.
To recite the obvious: Trump has been found liable for sexually abusing a woman, has bragged about his ability to sexually assault women at will, faced complaints about leering at teenage contestants in the locker rooms of beauty pageants, has cheated (often ostentatiously) on all three of his wives and faces numerous other credible allegations of sexual misconduct.
Hegseth, Trump’s moral clone, has faced credible allegations of sexual assault and admitted cheating on the mother of his children with five different women. His former sister-in-law has alleged he abused his next wife. His drunken escapades have become notorious.
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” wrote one of his critics. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
When the idea is that only families, led by a husband, can vote, Hegseth dons the demeanor of a pious Christian and declares, “All of Christ for All of Life.” But the moment his marriage requires him to be faithful, his Bible hits the floor just before his pants.
We are all poor sinners, it’s true. But doesn’t it seem strange that the Kingdom of God would be brought forth by the most degenerate among us? Maybe it’s worth thinking about false prophets and the idea that “you will know them by their fruit.”
The Christian nationalist movement’s embrace of people like this can be understood in much the same way as the massive hoard of pornography found on the outwardly pious Osama bin Laden’s hard drives after his death: It shows that terrorism was his primary commitment, and his religion was a situationally dispensable secondary matter.
In the CNN segment, Wilson argued that working for a theocratic takeover of Idaho government is nothing but tending “our little corner of the vineyard.” Asked if Muslims in Idaho should have to live by Christian law, Wilson responded: “If I went to Saudi Arabia, I would fully expect to live under their God’s rules.”
But Idaho is not Wilson’s little corner of the vinyard.
What the Christian nationalist movement proposes is not a return to Idaho’s older and better days. It is the imposition of a new and fundamentally alien order. The equality of women, even if never perfectly realized, has been deeply threaded through Idaho’s history and tradition from the very beginning.
Unlike in many eastern states, the right of women to vote was not a late development in Idaho’s history. Only six years after Idaho’s 1890 founding, the right of women to vote was enshrined in the state Constitution – with the overwhelming approval of the then-all-male electorate – making ours the fourth state to protect universal suffrage.
That is our heritage.
Two years later, in 1898, Permeal J. French became Idaho’s first female constitutional officer when she was elected state superintendent. After that, Idaho has always had at least one woman in statewide office or Congress, except for a brief period between 2013 and 2014 between the resignation of State Controller Donna Jones and the election of Superintendent Sherri Ybarra.
That is our history.
The point isn’t for America or Idaho to be Saudi Arabia with a different religion. The point is for America and for Idaho to be free.
If Wilson doesn’t like that, maybe he should find another vineyard. Maybe the aforementioned Saudi Arabia, where it’s illegal to be gay, where women can’t vote, where institutions quite like slavery persist, where most of what Wilson and his cohort want for Idaho is already accomplished.
Sure, there may theological differences, but what’s a minor philosophical disagreement between friends, especially when they agree about pretty much everything else?
A growing share of Americans support legal protections for undocumented immigrants, while enthusiasm for broad deportations has declined, according to a new poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The poll found that 63% of respondents favored a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Only 37% supported deporting those without criminal records beyond immigration violations, and just 30% supported deporting undocumented immigrants who work full time and pay taxes.
Support for deporting immigrants with criminal records remains high, though it has softened slightly, dropping from 74% in April to 69% in July, the poll reveals. At the same time, 67% of respondents opposed separating undocumented immigrants from their children during enforcement proceedings, and 54% opposed deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons.
Tatishe Nteta, a political science professor and director of the poll, said the findings suggest the Trump administration “should emphasize the detention and removal of undocumented immigrants with criminal records” if it wants to align with public sentiment.
Despite this stated focus, deportation records published by CBS News on July 16 show that many individuals removed under Trump’s second term did not have violent criminal records.
Between January 1 and June 24, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported approximately 100,000 people, of whom 70,583 were labeled as having criminal convictions. However, the vast majority of these were for traffic or immigration-related offenses. In fact, convictions for violent crimes were relatively rare: 0.58% for homicide, 1.2% for sexual assault, and 0.42% for kidnapping.
The administration has also touted its crackdown on gang-affiliated individuals, but only 3,256 of the deported individuals were identified as known or suspected gang members or terrorists.
In response to questions about enforcement priorities by CBS News, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said ICE has now deported about 140,000 undocumented immigrants since Mr. Trump took office. She also added that 70% of those arrested by ICE were of “illegal aliens with criminal convictions or have pending criminal charges,” but declined to detail the nature of the convictions or criminal charges, or offer further specifics.
California Democrat Sen. Alex Padilla, in response to a question about a group arrested for planning to attack an ICE facility in Texas, told CNN this morning: “I do have concern when there are no requirements for ICE agents or other federal agents involved with the immigration enforcement actions to not even identify themselves.”
“If you’re a member of a working-class immigrant community, and you see unmarked cars roll into your community, people getting out of those cars with no identifiers that they are law enforcement, and literally not just detaining, in your mind, maybe kidnapping,” he warned.
DANA BASH, CNN: Officials are looking for a suspect who appeared to fire a gun at a federal agent during a raid. A few days before that, 10 people were arrested after opening fire outside an immigration detention facility in Texas, injuring a police officer. Authorities say it was a planned ambush.
Earlier this week, a man with a rifle in tactical gear was shot dead after firing at Texas Border Patrol, at least the facility. Are you worried that heated rhetoric around this and around the policies are actually putting law enforcement agents at risk?
SEN. ALEX PADILLA: First, let me just denounce any violence. Any violence against law enforcement is unacceptable.
Do I think heated rhetoric is part of what’s causing this response? Sadly, yes. And we have seen this administration escalate and escalate and escalate in all ways and matters, whether it’s the tactics of — with which they’re going about immigration enforcement. There’s a smarter, more effective way to do this than what they’re doing.
BASH: Well, they say that it’s the Democrats’ rhetoric, some calling ICE agents secret police, comparing them to the Gestapo.
PADILLA: Well, I wouldn’t use those words, but I do have concern when there are no requirements for ICE agents or other federal agents involved with the immigration enforcement actions to not even identify themselves.
I mean, if you’re a member of a working-class immigrant community, and you see unmarked cars roll into your community, people getting out of those cars with no identifiers that they are law enforcement, and literally not just detaining, in your mind, maybe kidnapping.
So that’s why Senator Booker and I have this bill to require that identification for ICE agents or anybody involved with immigration enforcement. It’s for the safety of the officers and agents, as well as safety for the community… and to protect against people exploiting the circumstances, impersonating ICE agents and getting involved with burglary, theft, kidnapping, sexual assault and worse.
BASH: The president, as you know, says that they wear masks to protect their own identity from people who want to go after law enforcement.
Among the group is a small number of charity volunteers working to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster: that thousands of US-born Haitian children could become stateless, or separated from their families.
“In the last several months we realized that the closer we got to the deportations and revocation of statuses meant that all these people who have babies … if they don’t have passports for their children, how are they going to take them out of the country with them?” says Casey Rollins, a volunteer at the local St Vincent de Paul chapter.
“All you have to look at is the previous [Trump] administration.” A Reuters report from 2023 found that nearly 1,000 children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border in 2017 and 2018 had never been reunited.
Springfield is home to about 1,217 and counting American-born Haitian children under the age of four, with several thousand more dependants under the age of 18. While the number of adults in the Ohio town of 60,000 people legally in the country on TPS is not known, local leaders estimate 10,000 to 15,000 Haitian nationals have come to Springfield, drawn by employment opportunities, since 2017. In April, data provided by the Springfield city school district to the Springfield News-Sun found that the district had 1,258 students enrolled as English language learners in K-12 schools, though that doesn’t mean all are children of Haitian descent.
For three months, Rollins, volunteers at Springfield Neighbors United and others have been working with dozens of Haitians who turn up at charity organizations seeking advice and help every day. One of the most requested issues from parents, Rollins says, is figuring out how to apply for birth certificates for their children, before it’s too late.
“If we can’t stop the deportations, we want to help get them a passport. That way, if they are deported or go to Canada or another welcoming nation, they’d be able to take the child,” she says.
“If it takes three or four months [to complete the bureaucratic process from securing a birth certificate to acquiring a passport], we have got to get moving on this.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/04/passports-haitian-kids-tps-trump-administration
A new report has revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is arresting noncriminal immigrants on the streets at historically high rates, with arrests of such individuals soaring by nearly 1,100% since 2017.
Citing newly released nonpublic data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by DeportationData.org, the Cato Institute reports that by early June 2025, ICE agents were arresting nearly 3,800 non-criminal immigrants per week outside of custodial settings—such as homes, workplaces, and public spaces—compared to 308 per week during the same period in 2017.
Overall, nearly 5,000 weekly “at-large” ICE arrests were being made in early June, up from 856 in June 2017. Of those, 79% targeted individuals with no criminal convictions. The data analyzed by Cato also indicates that 47% of ICE arrestees during the week of June 1–9 had neither a conviction nor any pending criminal charges.
In the first week of March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted an “enhanced enforcement operation” in New Mexico that resulted in the arrest of 48 people, as reported by the agency itself. Their names, whereabouts, whether they have access to counsel and which agency is holding them are all unknown, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which considers them to have been “forcibly disappeared.”
“This is not just a procedural issue, but a grave human rights violation,” said Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico. “When the government detains people and then their whereabouts are unknown and they are unreachable, it exempts them from the protection of the law. Families are left in agonizing uncertainty, desperate to contact their loved ones and ensure their safety. Enforced disappearances are prohibited by both our Constitution and international human rights laws,” she said.
…
“We are alarmed and disturbed that these four dozen New Mexican individuals remain unidentified and that insufficient transparency, oversight, and accountability has taken place to date regarding their whereabouts and wellbeing. We call on your offices to exercise the full extent of your authorities to determine their current status and ensure their safety,” the complaint states.
