Which U.S. states accounted for the largest share of ICE arrests in 2025 and how did local policies affect those numbers?
Executive summary
Texas, Florida and California together accounted for the lion’s share of ICE arrests in the first half of 2025, with Texas alone shouldering an outsized portion (roughly one in four arrests) as enforcement surged under the Trump administration; Washington, D.C., and several counties also showed sharp increases [1] [2] [3]. Local policies — especially whether counties and states permit jails to notify and transfer detainees to ICE — strongly shaped where arrests occurred, pushing cooperative jurisdictions to register far higher jail‑based arrest counts while sanctuary jurisdictions saw more community “at‑large” operations [4] [5] [6].
1. The states that dominated the arrest totals and their scale
Across multiple compilations of ICE and Deportation Data Project figures, Texas, Florida and California emerge as the top contributors to national arrest totals in 2025, together accounting for roughly 41 percent of arrests in the January–June window, with Texas far outpacing others on both raw counts and per‑capita rates [1] [7]. Independent reporting and state analyses amplify that concentration: Texas accounted for about 24 percent of ICE arrests through late July in one analysis, and Washington, D.C., recorded the steepest percentage increase year‑over‑year from a very low base [2] [3].
2. How local jail cooperation funnels people into ICE custody
A consistent line in the data and advocacy reporting is that where counties and states require or permit local jails to notify ICE, those jurisdictions generate disproportionately high numbers of jail‑based arrests because people booked on criminal charges are flagged and transferred into federal custody [4] [5]. Analyses focused on Texas illustrate this funnel effect: local criminal processing became the principal mechanism sending people into ICE custody, explaining much of the state’s outsized share of total arrests [2].
3. Sanctuary and restrictive‑collaboration policies shift enforcement into communities
In states with policies restricting cooperation with ICE — California, Massachusetts, New York and others — arrests were more likely to occur in streets, workplaces and homes rather than inside jails, reflecting a tactical shift by federal officers who pursue at‑large operations where jail notifications are blocked [5] [6]. The Washington Post found agency strategy moved away from jail‑based transfers toward community tracking as the administration pushed to raise arrest totals, a shift that alters both geography and the visible face of enforcement [6].
4. Demographics, priority lists and local targets complicate the map
Beyond formal collaboration rules, ICE’s internal priority lists and the demographics of immigrant populations influenced where agents focused resources — urban centers and agricultural or industrial labor hubs saw intense activity, and some states (Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, Nevada and the District) were explicitly named on priority lists or experienced concentrated operations [8] [9]. County‑level concentrations matter: a small number of counties produced a disproportionately large share of community arrests, underscoring that state totals can hide sub‑state hotspots [9].
5. Data caveats, political motives and competing narratives
All of these conclusions must be read alongside significant data limitations and political context: ICE’s public data contained incomplete location fields and coding shifts in 2025 that obscure where arrests actually occurred, and the agency changed how it reports Criminal Alien Program arrests, complicating comparisons over time [4]. The administration frames the surge as targeting dangerous criminals — a claim reflected in ICE’s published mission statements [10] — but independent reporting and aggregated data show a growing share of arrestees had no criminal conviction, and critics argue political pressure and local cooperation rules, not only criminality, drove the spatial pattern of arrests [3] [11].
6. Bottom line: policy choices, not just geography, determined which states dominated arrests
The empirical picture across sources is clear: states with large undocumented populations and permissive or mandated cooperation with ICE (notably Texas and Florida) produced the largest shares of arrests, while sanctuary or restrictive‑collaboration states saw enforcement adapt into community operations rather than jail transfers; reporting gaps and reporting‑policy changes by ICE make precise tallies imperfect, but multiple datasets and analyses converge on cooperation rules and local criminal processing as primary levers shaping the 2025 arrest geography [1] [2] [4] [5].