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The state has emerged as an iconic battlefield in the administration’s deportation campaign since federal immigration attacks rose across California and sparked fierce protests that urged President Trump to deploy troops in Los Angeles.
But even if arrests surged, California was not the epicenter of Trump’s anti-immigration projects.
For the first five months of Trump’s second term, California lagged behind solid red states in Texas and Florida with a complete arrest. According to an analysis of the Los Angeles Times’ Deportation Data Project for Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Data, Texas reported 26,341 arrests (nearly a quarter of all ice arrests nationwide) followed by 12,982 in Florida and 8,460 in California.
Even in June, 3,391 undocumented immigrants were arrested in California when masked federal immigration agents cleaned LA and jumped out of vehicles to rob people from bus stops, car washes and parking lots.
Considering population, California ranked 27th in the nation, with 217 arrests per million residents. About a quarter of Texas is arrested 864 per million, and less than half of many states, including Florida, Arkansas, Utah, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Nevada.
Data released after the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government excludes arrests made since June 26th, and does not specify state details in 5% of cases. Nevertheless, it provides the most detailed look of the nation’s ice operation.
Immigration experts say it’s not surprising that California has the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the country and the birthplace of the Chicano movement.
“The numbers continue to the politics of performance right now,” said Austin Cochel, a geographer and assistant professor of research at Syracuse University, specializing in immigration enforcement.
Part of the reason Republican-dominated states have higher arrests – especially when measured against population, they have a long history of working directly with the ice and a strong interest in collaborative work. In the red states from Texas to Mississippi, local law enforcement officials regularly work with federal agents by liability for ice through the so-called 287(g) contract or identifying undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated and placed in prisons and undocumented immigrants.
In fact, data shows that only 7% of ice arrests made in California this year were made through the Crime Alien Program. This is an initiative that requires local law enforcement to identify undocumented immigrants in federal, state, and local prisons and prisons.
This is significantly lower than 55% of arrests in Texas, with 46% in Florida being made through prisons and prisons. Other conservative states with less populations also relied on the programme more heavily. 75% of Alabama ice arrests and 71% in Indiana took place through prisons and prisons.
“State cooperation has generally been an important buffer in ice stops and ice operations for many years,” said Ariel Lewis Soto, a senior policy analyst based in Sacramento at the Mygule Policy Institute. “We have seen that the state not only cooperates with the ice, but is now actively establishing a 287(g) agreement with local law enforcement, but of course it is throwing a wider net of enforcement at that state’s boundaries.”
California only considers several criminal offences, including serious felony, but is important enough to share information with ICE. Texas and Florida are more likely to report crimes that may not be as serious, such as minor traffic violations.
Still, they witnessed one of the most dramatic increase in arrests in the country, even if fewer people were arrested in California than in other states.
California ranked 30th in February per million people. By June, the state had risen to 10th place.
Ice arrested around 8,460 immigrants across California between January 20th and June 26th, an increase of 212% compared to five months before Trump took office. This is in contrast to a 159% increase nationwide over the same period.
Much of Ice’s activities in California focused on hypers in Greater Los Angeles. During Trump’s first five months, about 60% of ice outages in seven counties in the state took place in and around LA. The number of arrests in the Los Angeles area skyrocketed from 463 in January to 2,185 in June. With a 372% spike, second only to New York’s 432% increase.
Even though California has not seen the largest number of arrests, experts say the dramatic increase in capture stands out from elsewhere due to its lack of official cooperation with immigration agents and public hostility.
“The slight increase in places where there is little cooperation is, in a sense, more important than seeing an increase in areas where there is a lot of cooperation,” Kocher said.
Kocher said ICE agents must work much harder to arrest immigrants in places like LA and California, which define them as “sanctuary” jurisdictions and limit cooperation with federal immigration agents.
“They really had to get in the way,” he said.
Trump administration officials have long argued that sanctuary jurisdictions have no choice but to round people up on the streets.
Shortly after President Trump won the 2024 election, LA City Council voted unanimously to prevent city resources from being used for immigration enforcement, while border enforcement adviser Tom Homan threatened an onslaught.
“If we have to send twice as many executives to LA because we don’t get assistance, that’s what we’re trying to do,” Homan told Newsmax.
With limited cooperation from California prisons, ice agents have stepped out into the community and rounded up people suspected of being undocumented on street corners, factories and farms.
That tactical change meant that criminally convicted immigrants would no longer make up for the majority of California ice arrests. Approximately 66% of migrants arrested during the first four months of the year were criminally convicted, but that percentage fell to 30% in June.
The drastic nature of the arrests immediately garnered criticism as a racial profiling, and produced robust community condemnation.
Some immigration experts and community activists cite organized resistance in LA. Another reason is that the number of ice outages is lower in California than in Texas, and the proportion of the population is lower than in dozens of states.
“The reason is resistance, organized resistance. Those who literally went to war with them in Paramount, Compton, Bell and Huntington Park,” said Ron Gosches, a member of Union Del Barrio Los Angeles, an independent political group that patrols the neighborhood to warn of immigrant sweeps.
“They have been kicked out in different areas where we organize,” he said. “We were able to mobilize the community to surround the agents when agents came to invite people around them.”
In Los Angeles, activists patrolled the streets from 5am to 11pm and patrolled until seven days a week. They faced off against ice agents at Home Depot’s parking lots and warehouses and farms.
“We were doing everything we could to keep up with the strength of the military attack,” Gosches said. “The resistance was strong… We were able to protect and expel the community many times.”
The protest urged Trump to deploy the National Guard and Marines in June with the express purpose of protecting federal buildings and staff. However, the administration’s ability to ratchet arrests clashed with obstacles on July 11th. It issued federal judges issued temporary restraining orders blocking immigration agents in California and Central California, targeting people without race, language, calling, or reasonable doubt that they are illegal.
The decision was upheld last week by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. However, on Thursday, the Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court to lift a temporary ban on patrols, claiming that it “threatens to support the ability of immigration officials to enforce immigration laws in the Central District of California by handing down the prospect of lightly emptying to all investigation suspensions.”
The order significantly reduced arrests across Los Angeles last month. But this week, federal agents carried out a series of raids at Home Depot from Westlake to Vannuys.
Trump administration officials have shown that the slower July rulings and arrests do not suggest a lasting change in tactics.
“The sanctuary cities are trying to get exactly what they don’t want. More agents in the community and more workplace enforcement,” Homan told reporters two weeks after the court blocked the roving patrol. “Why is that so? They don’t let one agent arrest one bad guy in prison.”
Gregory Bovino, the chief of the US Border Patrol, who runs a major business in California, posted a video showing him laughing “this experiment that was practiced in the city of Los Angeles, which failed,” reporters, a video showing him laughing. Then, as the enthusiastic drum and bass mix began, federal agents jumped out of the van and chased the people.
“What do you do when you face opposition to law and order?” Bovino wrote. “Improvise, adapt, overcome!”
Clearly, the Trump administration is willing to devote important resources to making California a political battlefield and test case, Lewis Soto said. The question is what economic and political costs are.
“If they really want to expand and ramp up deportation,” Lewis Soto said.
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