THREE DAYS after Donald Trump became president, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided the Ocean Seafood Gourmet Market and Depot in Newark’s Ironbound district. ICE interrogated workers, including an American citizen, before making three arrests. It is not clear whether the agents had a judicial warrant. The raid helped launch the Trump administration’s long-promised blitzkrieg of immigration enforcement. Cabinet officials and TV cameras have accompanied ICE on other raids; publicity creates deterrence and reinforces MAGA messaging.
In Democratic strongholds like Newark, the raids also troll the opposition. “You can’t just arbitrarily detain people,” says Ras Baraka, mayor of Newark. “You can’t just walk up to somebody without probable cause.” Mr Baraka dispatched the city’s lawyer to the seafood market and is working to strengthen responses to other unannounced and invasive raids.
Can Mr Trump keep his promise to reduce America’s unauthorised population, which is estimated to be as high as 13m? Storming markets to arrest three people at a time (two of whom, in this case, were released on bond) is not a promising path. Following Mr Trump’s inauguration, ICE reported daily arrests ranging from 286 to 1,179. He vowed to target migrants with criminal convictions or criminal charges. But it is clear that, as in Newark, migrants without criminal histories are being rounded up. According to data released on February 14th, this group makes up 14% of all those detained, an increase of 6%. Even with this increase of non-criminals, sustaining a rate of a thousand arrests per day will be difficult. ICE stopped releasing a daily arrests number in early February, which may be because the agency would rather nobody kept count.
The majority of arrests happen at the border (see chart). Such detentions are easier and cheaper but there are now fewer unauthorised immigrants to catch there. Border encounters last December were the lowest they have been since 2021, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Irregular migration is affected by the availability of jobs, the severity of crises abroad and deterrence, which is Mr Trump’s strong suit. But without a surge of new migrants at the southern border, “I can’t even think where [the Trump administration] would go to net a large cache of unauthorised people,” says Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank.
Without a warrant or consent, law-enforcement agents are constrained when investigating inside the United States. They can only enter public spaces and public areas of private businesses, such as parking lots or lobbies. They must then determine who is undocumented, which can be tricky. Police can’t enter a random room and search everyone for identification, notes Michael Kagan, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Large busts are often inefficient, says Mr Chishti, as Newark shows. A more extravagant enforcement operation in the Bronx on January 28th resulted in even fewer arrests. Despite Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, donning a bulletproof vest to join ICE, and later posting video on X, the entire spectacle resulted in the arrest of one undocumented immigrant wanted by authorities in New York.
It is much easier to round up migrants who are already detained. But that requires a jail’s leadership to play ball, and “sanctuary” laws limit co-operation with ICE in many Democratic states and cities. These thwarted Mr Trump during his first term and may constrain him again (though in New York, a sanctuary city, the mayor, Eric Adams, gave ICE permission to open an office on Rikers Island, its largest jail). A pressing problem is capacity. “We are very, very close to having as many people in detention as there are detention beds,” says Amy Torres, head of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, an advocacy group. As of February 9th, ICE’s total detained population reached 41,169, just a smidge below the system’s 41, 500 capacity.
On January 29th Ms Noem announced that the Trump administration had revoked temporary protections from deportation provided to about 600,000 Venezuelans in America. This pool might be easier to locate and deport, but large round-ups would require more detention facilities.
Mr Trump says he has a plan for that. He has issued an executive order to increase migrant detention beds at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay “for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”. Several flights have already carried detainees from El Paso. But Guantanamo has an estimated capacity of 30,000. He will need many more such camps if the administration is to meet its campaign rhetoric of deporting over 10m people. ■
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