• The Trump administration began a mass deportation campaign, arresting 538 undocumented immigrants with criminal records. 
• Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, claimed over 3000 arrests, but ICE did not clarify numbers. 
• The raids caused fear in immigrant communities, with concerns about targeting minor offenders and sanctuary cities. 

The Trump administration circulated photos today showing US troops loading shackled detainees on to a military cargo plane, as the White House declared a start to the mass deportation campaign the President promised along the campaign trail. 

The White House said immigration agents have arrested 538 undocumented immigrants with criminal records and deported “hundreds” more. Those numbers, if accurate, would be relatively modest for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge operations – a possible indication that the Trump administration’s show of force has so far outpaced the Government’s capacity to deliver on the President’s lofty goals. 

But Trump’s border czar Tom Homan cited a higher number than the White House on NewsNation yesterday, saying officials had arrested more than 3000 people with criminal records in the first couple of days of the administration. ICE, which detains and deports immigrants, did not respond to requests to clarify the numbers. 

Trump and his officials provided few details about those arrests or proof of their criminal records. Trump has long characterised immigrants as criminals, though studies show that native-born Americans commit a higher share of violent felonies. 

“It’s going very well. We’re getting the bad, hard criminals out,” Trump said, speaking to reporters during a trip to North Carolina to view the flood recovery from Hurricane Helene last year. 

Without evidence, he said: “These are murderers. These are people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen. We’re taking them out first.” 

US President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on January 23 local time in Washington DC. Photo / Getty Images 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt publicised the 538 arrests yesterday and eary today, highlighting some serious offenders. She wrote that four of those arrested in the sweeps were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Others had committed sex crimes against children, Leavitt said. 

“Deportation flights have begun. President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences,” Leavitt wrote on X. “The largest massive deportation operation in history is well under way.” 

Immigration officials did not say precisely how many immigrants were deported as part of the nationwide operations that unfolded this week – or how many were criminals – but officials have said their main targets are serious offenders. 

The number of arrests the White House publicised was lower than the 675 detained in similar raids after Trump took office in 2017 threatening to deport “millions” of people, though he never came close to that number. 

Then, as now, officials said criminals were their top priority. Weeks later, however, congressional aides discovered that half of those arrested had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offences as their most serious crimes, which ICE said were mostly for drunken driving. 

This week, the military flew two C-17 cargo jets, each carrying approximately 80 people, to Guatemala after they crossed the US-Mexico border illegally, according to a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operations. 

The flights departed from Texas and Arizona, officials said. ICE Air is continuing to operate deportation flights alongside military planes, officials said. 

Tom Cartwright, who tracks ICE deportations for the immigrant advocacy group Witness at the Border, called the military operation “theatre of the absurd” in a post on X. “The only thing new about this is subjecting people to transport on a cargo plane,” Cartwright wrote. He noted that ICE carried out 508 deportation flights to Guatemala during the 2024 fiscal year on planes that averaged 125 passengers. 

Installation begins for the first of six tents that will be used to house migrants deported from the United States through the border, in Ciudad Juarez, United States. Photo / Getty Images 

The immigration sweeps hit immediately after Trump took office in cities and states across the country, targeting areas where Democrats have defended immigrants and urged Congress to grant them a path to US citizenship. Trump has called for their mass removal, and on Inauguration Day he directed the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Defence to prioritise immigration enforcement. 

Homan, a former acting ICE director and Fox News analyst, said in an appearance on Fox News yesterday that agents were arresting people in sanctuary cities, where local officials refuse to allow agents to arrest immigrants in their jails after police have picked them up for alleged crimes. 

Many local officials say they cannot keep someone in jail for a civil immigration violation after a judge has ordered the person released on bail in a criminal case. And some have expressed frustration that ICE targets minor offenders, making the broader community afraid to report crimes to police. 

Trump officials have called for rescinding federal funding to those cities and have threatened to prosecute any officials who obstruct immigration officers. 

“Sanctuary cities make it less efficient and more dangerous, but it’s not going to stop us,” Homan said. “We’re hitting every sanctuary city right now.” 

ICE detains undocumented residents, US citizens ‘without producing a warrant’ - mayor 

Newark Mayor Ras A. Baraka said yesterday that ICE raided a local business, detaining undocumented residents and US citizens “without producing a warrant”. 

“One of the detainees is a US military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned,” the mayor said in a statement. He said federal agents violated the veteran’s rights. “Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorised,” Baraka added. 

ICE declined to provide detailed answers about the allegations, saying the investigation is ongoing. 

But spokesman Jeff Carter said in an email that agents “may encounter US citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity”, which is what happened in Newark. 

ICE has arrested immigrants, particularly criminals, across every administration, and the Biden administration boasted that it was aggressively pursuing serious offenders. Days before President Joe Biden left office, ICE said it had arrested 33 criminal non-citizens in a week-long operation in December, also in Newark. 

As of July 21, ICE said it was tracking nearly 650,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal records who had been released into the United States, though only 425,000 had convictions. The others were pending trial. 

Many are serving criminal sentences in state prisons or jails, while others are minor offenders who had been spared removal under the Biden administration. Trump has said any of the estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally could be deported. 

The outsize psychological effect of ICE operations this week appeared to generate the kind of fervour Trump has been seeking. In Boston, a Fox News crew broadcast live as ICE officers knocked on doors, and in cities where operations netted a handful of arrests, immigrant advocacy groups and Democratic representatives denounced “raids”. 

Raids across the United States sent a chilling effect across immigrant communities in Boston, Maryland and New Jersey, worrying people in schools, shopping centres and food banks. 

In the DC area, the volunteer group Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network launched a hotline on Tuesday for area residents to call if they believe they see ICE officers in public. The group has not confirmed any wide-scale raids or enforcement actions this week, but the phones have kept ringing, said Amy Fischer, one of the group’s organisers. 

“What is really clear is that people are just terrified,” Fischer said. “It really seems like any time there is an unmarked cop car or something that looks like a cop car, people call … It describes the overall moment or atmosphere that we are living in.” 

In Montgomery County, Maryland, county officials said ICE agents arrested an immigrant with a felony in Gaithersburg yesterday. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for information about the arrest, but it sparked fears of broader immigration sweeps at a local shopping centre and high school. Similar rumours have swept across the county since Trump took office. 

Some residents have confused local law enforcement for ICE agents, said Earl Stoddard, an assistant chief administrative officer in Montgomery County, a sign of locals’ anxieties that their neighbourhood could be the agency’s next target. 

“It’s been every day this week,” Stoddard said yesterday. “People calling in worrying about ICE. This was the first time it was real.”