Despite high-profile immigration enforcement operations in places like Minneapolis and Los Angeles last year, new data from the New York Times shows that Florida’s Miami field office conducted the highest number of immigration arrests in 2025 and is similarly leading the pack so far this year.
The Miami field office has been responsible for 41,310 immigration-related arrests since Donald Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, according to an analysis by the Times, or 120 arrests per day on average. Trailing behind the Miami office are Dallas (with 30,250 arrests), New Orleans (with 29,210 arrests) and Houston (with 27,090 arrests).
President Trump made his pledge to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history” very clear to the public and his base, even before his inauguration last January. He initially claimed that federal agents would target hardened criminals in the country illegally, before seemingly forgetting this guidance — or at the very least, failing to enforce it — in order to allow agents to go after everyday parents, business owners and children instead.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who already signed into law one of the harshest state-level immigration policies in the country a couple of years ago, has gone to great lengths to ensure state agencies and local governments fall in line with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Florida — home to the third-largest population of undocumented people, behind New York and California — leads the nation in the number of agreements it has in place with ICE, known as 287(g)s. These allow state employees of agencies like the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to undergo training and conduct certain immigration enforcement actions on behalf of the federal government.
“We are seeing people aggressively being taken by masked agents in our communities — unmarked uniforms, arrests without warrants. Now we have the Fish and Wildlife and, incredibly, even the Department of Finance agents in our streets, at our doors, working for ICE,” said Immigrants Are Welcome Here coalition coordinator Ericka Tejeda-Gomez, speaking at a press conference outside the Orange County Administrative Building in downtown Orlando last December.
Miami’s ICE field office covers Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. According to the agency’s website, it’s the only ICE field office in Florida that specifically focuses on enforcement and removal operations, or ERO.
In Orange County, thousands of people have been booked into the county jail alone by federal immigration enforcement since Trump took office. It holds as many as 185 people a day for no other reason than allegedly being in the country illegally.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, a Democrat running for Florida governor this year, has threatened to cancel the county’s agreement with ICE — allowing ICE to detain people in the jail for up to 72 hours — if the federal government fails to fully reimburse the county for the cost of holding federal detainees. Holding ICE detainees has cost the county more than $300,000 so far and counting. Federal officials have until March 31 to reach an agreement for a renegotiated reimbursement rate, per a letter penned by Demings last month.
In the meantime, local immigrant rights advocates have urged the county to end its agreement with ICE and ensure due process rights for people who are being held in the jail by ICE. These calls have only become more amplified since the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents — a stunning display of violence that sent shockwaves through the country earlier this year.
The Trump administration deployed thousands of ICE agents to Minneapolis in what they dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” stoking a surge in immigration-related arrests and chaos on the streets. From mid-December through March 10, ICE’s St. Paul office arrested more than 5,000 people, according to the Times. Still, data shows the Miami field office arrested nearly 10,000 people during that same period.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican and former chief of staff for DeSantis, has threatened to remove local government officials from office if they fail to demonstrate that they are giving their “best efforts” to support federal immigration enforcement, as required under state statutes that (notably) do not specify what “best efforts” entail.
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