ICE arrests surge as public outrage declines

Kieran Doyle, US Analyst at ACLED, said:

“ICE arrests reached record levels in July, but without the kind of highly visible immigration raids that previously triggered protests across the United States. The Trump administration has not scaled back its mass deportation drive — it has changed how it is being carried out.

“This shift in strategy was an explicit goal of Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, who took over from Kristi Noem in March 2026. Massive ICE operations targeting cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis were Noem’s signature immigration crackdown strategy. Mullin has decided to go in a different direction, keeping ICE out of the headlines while focusing on cooperation with local law enforcement and making arrests at traffic stops, airports, and immigration check-ins. The data  shows his approach  is working.

“Even as ICE arrests broke record numbers, pro-immigration demonstrations declined to their lowest levels since early 2025, shortly after Trump began his second term. Amid a record 50,000 ICE arrests in July, pro-immigration demonstrations in the United States were nearly 10 times less frequent than shortly after the backlash over a controversial ICE operation in Minneapolis in January. 

“The Minneapolis operation generated so much backlash not just because of its aggression and scale, but also because law enforcement agents shot and killed two people in the city’s streets: Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Mullin’s strategy has not prevented the same kind of deadly encounters from taking place, yet these incidents have not caused the same degree of uproar among protesters. In the space of six days in early July, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man, in Houston, Texas, and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian man, in Biddeford, Maine, both during traffic stops. 

“Though demonstrations in the communities of the slain men briefly spiked, neither reached the fever pitch of Minneapolis. This may be because those shootings were not recorded by bystanders, and thus did not create further outrage by circulating online. Both Good and Pretti were killed alongside demonstrators who filmed law enforcement agents on their phones. Araujo and Guerrero were more isolated, killed by agents conducting traffic stops.

“Mullin’s strategy of lower-profile enforcement across a more dispersed area is proving effective in driving up arrest numbers while keeping anti-ICE protests, and public outrage more broadly, to a minimum.”