Data show how Trump has changed Washington state immigration enforcement

SEATTLE — Since President Donald Trump took office, promising mass deportations, many have been trying to assess exactly how dramatically immigration enforcement has changed in Washington state. Yes, immigration authorities have raided at least two worksites, smashed car windows, roamed immigration court hallways and detained people suddenly summoned to the Department of Homeland Security's Tukwila office building.

But little has been known about whether the number of arrests and detentions in the state has ramped up as much as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's aggressive tactics. Recently released data from the Deportation Data Project, collected through Freedom of Information Requests by the University of California, provides answers.

The data shows immigration enforcement has indeed scaled up in Washington. Arrests have climbed, most sharply in June, but not as much as they have nationwide. Most of those arrested in Washington and nationwide do not have a criminal record.

Perhaps even more noteworthy, immigrant advocates say, 100% of those arrested in Washington are now spending time detained in jail-like conditions, whereas some used to be released into the community with a form of monitoring, like ankle bracelets or periodic ICE check-ins.

It is striking to me to see such a clear pattern," said Phil Neff, a researcher with the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, which is often critical of immigration enforcement policies. He tracked the number of local people who were detained through a unique identifier for each person that ICE supplied with the data.

The figures run from September 2023 through late June this year, so they don't offer a complete comparison of enforcement patterns under Trump versus those under former President Joe Biden. The former president got tougher in some respects as the November 2024 election neared and his immigration policies faced ceaseless criticism from his opponent.

The data is also flawed, with obvious errors such as arrests not attached to Washington despite noted apprehension sites in the state.

Yet even with the data's limitations, it's possible to get an overall picture and put recent figures in perspective.

Rising ICE arrests in Washington and nationally

The data shows 277 ICE arrests in Washington in June. That's more than twice the number of any previous month since Trump took office. The high point of arrests during the last 16 full months of the Biden administration was 202 in September 2023.

On average, the monthly number of ICE arrests in Washington rose from 93 during that period of the Biden administration to 145 so far during Trump's (not including January, divided between the two presidents, with Trump taking office Jan. 20) — a nearly 56% increase.

Nationally, ICE's monthly arrest average has more than doubled what it was in Biden's last 16 full months. A University of California, Los Angeles research center last week released a report fleshing out the wide variation between states in the rate of ICE arrests between February and June. Washington had the second lowest rate, behind Oregon, while Mississippi had the highest rate.

That trend rings true to Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. "There is an uptick" of local arrests, he said. "But it's not like this massive escalation."

How many arrested in WA have criminal records

Of those ICE has arrested in Washington under Trump, the percentage with criminal convictions has declined from 43% in February to 31% in June, according to the data. An increasing share of those arrested had pending criminal charges during that time. Even so, most of the Washingtonians ICE arrested in June — 57% — had no criminal record.

Some of the criminal charges and convictions could relate to entering or re-entering the U.S. illegally, although such charges are not often brought in Washington as they are in border states like Texas and Arizona, according to Adams. Living in the country without authorization, for example by overstaying a visa, is not a crime.

The data on criminality, reflected in multiple stories of Washingtonians with clean records being arrested, contradicts Trump's repeated statements that he is targeting immigrants who are the "worst of the worst."

Asked to respond, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement: "This data is being cherry picked by the Deportation Data Project to peddle a false narrative. Many of the individuals that are counted as 'non-criminals' are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S."

McLaughlin did not say what evidence the administration had of such criminal activity.

While many have focused on the difference between rhetoric and reality in the current administration, Trump is by no means the first to arrest immigrants without criminal records. Immigration authorities under former President Barack Obama commonly did so before a policy change in his second term.

The Deportation Data Project numbers show the Biden administration did so too. In September 2023, 85% of those arrested by ICE in Washington lacked a criminal record. That number dropped throughout the rest of his term, to just 13% by December 2024. Trump immediately reversed the trajectory.

Changes in how many arrested are then detained

Trump has continued a trend that was underway during the Biden administration: detaining a greater share of people arrested. In September 2023, 27% of those arrested by ICE in Washington were detained. By the end of Biden's term, 91% were. In June, everyone was.

The increase has contributed to a surge in population at the 1,575-bed Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, which had dropped dramatically during the height of the pandemic as the government scaled back immigration enforcement. The detention center became so full in June that ICE temporarily transferred 41 people to Alaska.

The government is supposed to make detention decisions based on whether immigrants are a danger to the community or a flight risk, noted Adams of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. But in practice, many people have been detained regardless, he said.

"With the big qualifying exception of the COVID period, this has been how immigration detention operates, Adams said. His organization in March filed a lawsuit challenging routine bond denials by most judges at the immigration court housed inside the detention center.

The Deportation Data Project hopes to receive updated state-by-state ICE figures soon. National figures compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse show a dip in ICE arrests in July, as public sentiment grew more critical about immigration enforcement.

Yet to be seen is if ICE followed suit in Washington.