By Alexandra Mendoza and Kristen Taketa / San Diego Union-Tribune / April 7, 2026
Immigration arrests in the San Diego area appear to have decreased in the first two months of this year compared to late last year, though they are still much more frequent than under the Biden administration, recently released data show.
The slowdown comes after a year in which arrests increased by over 1,300% from 2024, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data provided to the Deportation Data Project by the agency in response to a public record request and analyzed by the Union-Tribune.
The data now covers more than a year into the second term of the Trump administration, which has been notable for its increased efforts to crack down on immigration.
ICE made about 8,300 arrests in the San Diego field office in 2025, up from about 600 the previous year, the data show. The office oversees San Diego and Imperial counties. December alone saw almost 1,500 arrests.
Over the past year, Trump administration officials have repeatedly stated that they will target the “worst of the worst,” referring to individuals with serious criminal records.
However, from January 2025 through March 10, 2026, data show that approximately 59% of arrests at the San Diego field office were individuals with no pending criminal charges or prior convictions. During the first months of 2026, the percentage remained above 50%.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed the percentage of people arrested who have criminal backgrounds is higher.
“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” the spokesperson said. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally.”
The spokesperson claimed the Deportation Data Project’s work is inaccurate, even though the project publishes data that comes directly from ICE itself, which the federal agency has stopped making readily available to the general public.
ICE’s website used to publish nationwide and field office data on arrests and removals, as well as other information, but it has not been updated since President Donald Trump took office last year. The Union-Tribune is excluding from its analysis ICE records of arrests that are likely to be duplicates.
Top federal officials — including former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem during her February visit to San Diego — have said that ICE’s focus would be on targeted enforcement operations against individuals with criminal records, in the wake of a large-scale operation in Minneapolis in which two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by ICE agents in separate incidents.
The San Diego division made fewer arrests in the first two months of 2026 than it did in the last few months of 2025. There were about 1,100 arrests each in January and February, and 350 in the first 10 days of March.
Compared to the rest of the country, the San Diego division has made fewer arrests than most other ICE divisions. However, some other ICE divisions cover larger geographic areas, including some that encompass multiple states.
The recent decline in arrests seems to align with what some volunteers and immigration advocates who monitor ICE activity have seen so far this year.
Adriana Jasso, a Unión del Barrio volunteer who participates in community patrols throughout San Diego County to monitor ICE activity, said that although immigration enforcement operations continue, she has noticed fewer community reports on social media and over the phone compared to late last year.
Jasso and the other volunteers believe that the events of Minneapolis’ “Operation Metro Surge” were a factor, prompting public outcry and nationwide protests.
“I do think that somehow (DHS) knows that popular opinion is against them,” said the Rev. Scott Santarosa from Our Lady of Guadalupe church, who has accompanied immigrants to the San Diego federal building for ICE check-ins and immigration court hearings.
A late-January NPR/PBS News/Marist poll showed that 65% of surveyed Americans believe that ICE has “gone too far.”
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said during his confirmation hearing last month that he believes in a “new approach,” and that he wanted to work with local law enforcement and pick up individuals in jail. “I would love to see ICE become a transport, more than the frontline,” he said.
California law restricts cooperation with federal immigration officials, but it still allows local agencies to notify the federal government of release dates and transfer individuals to ICE in certain cases involving serious crimes. Last year, the number of noncitizens transferred from San Diego County jails to federal immigration custody nearly tripled, from 30 to 83, largely due to federal authorities increasing their use of judicial warrants.
Mullin said Monday in an interview with Fox News that the agency is still going after “the most egregious felons and criminals out there,” but added that people with final deportation orders or those who don’t show up to their court dates are “still in the country illegal.”
“That doesn’t mean that we are going to necessarily be hunting you every single day,” he said. Mullin also added that undocumented immigrants should self-deport and return to the system legally.
For much of the past year, more arrests were also reported outside immigration courtrooms and during ICE check-ins at the Edward J. Schwartz federal building in downtown San Diego, as well as during green card interviews at the nearby U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building.
In response, faith leaders and other volunteers have joined existing efforts to accompany immigrants to their hearings and appointments since the summer. To date, more than 700 volunteers have received training to participate in the program.
As arrests increased, volunteers observed that immigrants were being transferred to a holding room at the federal building after being detained. Officials have described this room as a staging facility where they are held before they are transferred to a long-term detention center, such as the Otay Mesa Detention Facility.
Data from the Deportation Data Project show that people were being detained in the San Diego holding room more frequently in the latter half of 2025 compared to earlier in the year and during the Biden administration, though monthly detentions in the holding room have dipped slightly during 2026.
ICE agents booked somebody into the holding room more than 2,000 times in 2025, compared to about 1,200 times in 2024, according to the data.
Pedro Ríos, the director of the U.S.-Mexico Border Program at the American Friends Service Committee, noted that there have been fewer arrests inside federal buildings, and that more community members are monitoring ICE activity on the streets and inside those buildings.
Several volunteers have reported that arrests outside immigration hearings and green card interviews have practically stopped, though some still occur during ICE check-ins.
It would be impossible for anyone rational person to claim that the majority of “non-criminals” are “terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters” and other lawbreakers who simply don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S. That would mean that all the landscapers, child care workers, restaurant workers, warehouse employees, nursing home workers, housekeepers and other hard-working folks (many with federal work authorization) were taking a break from their criminal pursuits in order to work for a living. Only to get arrested as they kept their appointments with ICE and immigration courts. Let’s see: 8300 arrests in San Diego field office in 2025. 59% of them having no criminal record of any kind. That would be almost 5,000 folks arrested without criminal records of any kind. And DHS is trying to make the case that most of these 5,000 people were really masquerading as criminals. Good heavens! When are we going to wake up? Maybe when we have to do the work these folks did, because we can’t find anyone else to do it.