Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) publishes semi-monthly statistics that are legislatively mandated by the annual Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Acts Congress has passed. These provide monthly totals for initial ICE book-ins following an arrest as well as fiscal year totals to date for ICE removals. TRAC compiles initial ICE book-ins following an arrest on its QuickFacts page and provides a detailed time series going back to October 2018.

While these semi-monthly statistics don’t divide January neatly into before and after the change in presidential administrations, the series does capture the last 6 days of January of the new Trump administration. Initial book-ins did initially jump to 1,126 per day. But in February — despite assigning personnel from other agencies to immigration enforcement — daily numbers have fallen below daily arrests during FY 2024 under the Biden administration.

ICE removals are also tracked in this congressionally mandated series. Using recent updates to derive a daily rate of deportations, we find that removals actually declined during these initial fourteen days under Trump by 6.5 percent — despite enlisting the help of the military — when compared with the Biden presidency during FY 2024.

These records documenting arrests and removals during the initial days of the Trump presidency do not necessarily foretell future patterns. But they do show that thus far the hype does not in fact reflect what actually has occurred on the ground.

The full report provides full specifics of arrest and removal numbers and details how these comparisons were made.