Exclusive: In First Year of Trump 2.0, Rate of Indians Arrested by ICE Tripled

Under Trump, 84 percent of the ICE arrests of Indian citizens have been of individuals with no criminal convictions.

Under Donald Trump, 84 percent of the ICE arrests of Indian citizens have been of individuals with no criminal convictions.

(Photo: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

It has exactly been a year since Donald Trump took office on 20 January 2025, and began his second term as the President of the United States. 

Over this past year, he has led an immigration enforcement crackdown of gargantuan proportions, one in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have made more than 220,000 arrests of foreign nationals across the country. About 63 percent of the arrests since Trump took office have been of individuals with no criminal convictions.

Now, for the first time, The Quint is reporting how many of the ICE arrests under Trump have been of Indian citizens living in the US. 

Since Trump took office, there have been 1,977 arrests recorded by ICE of Indian nationals, according to The Quint’s analysis of data provided by ICE in response to a public records request in the US by the Deportation Data Project. The data is till mid-October, so these were the number of arrests within the first nine months of the second Trump administration.

(Chart: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

Data Counters Trump Administration’s ‘Worst of the Worst’ Narrative

As many as 84 percent of the ICE arrests of Indians were of individuals with no criminal convictions, and 57 percent were of individuals with neither any criminal convictions nor any pending criminal charges.

The data counters the Trump administration’s narrative that its immigration enforcement crackdown is aimed at hardcore criminals—“the worst of the worst.”

For instance, in September, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement,

“Ramped up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day…”

The government’s own data shows that this is far from the case.

(Chart: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

Rate of Arrests Shot up Under Trump

The rate of ICE arrests of Indians shot up sharply under Trump, increasing to more than triple the rate during the last year of the Joe Biden administration.

In the final year of the Biden administration, there had been 790 ICE arrests of Indians, at a rate of around two arrests a day on average. By comparison, in the first nine months of the Trump administration, there were around seven ICE arrests of Indians per day.

(Chart: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

Highest Number of Arrests in California

The states with the highest number of Indians arrested by ICE were California, with 643 arrests, followed by Texas (236), New York (113), and Indiana (101).

(Chart: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

Record Number of Indians Being Deported Too

In December last year, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament that 3,258 Indians were deported from the US in 2025 by 28 November. 

(Chart: Meghnad Bose/The Quint)

It was more than the tally of the previous three years combined, and the highest number of Indians deported from the US in any calendar year out of the 17 years for which data was provided by the Indian government.