In rush for immigration arrests, a shift by ICE to ‘incredibly aggressive’ tactics, advocates say

by Sam Gauntt, Maryland Matters
July 26, 2025

Throughout his 2024 campaign to return to the White House, President Donald Trump promised to implement the “largest deportation program” in the nation’s history.

And since he assumed office on Jan. 20, that promise has not only led to a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests, it’s shifted the agency’s tactics as well.

New data shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have more than doubled since the beginning of the second Trump administration. ICE made 1,736 arrests this year in Maryland — 1,683 since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration — through June 26, according to data compiled by the Deportation Data Project, a research team based in Berkeley, California.

That’s an average of about 9.8 arrests per day in Maryland in 2025. For comparison, there were 1,343 arrests in Maryland throughout all of 2024, for an average of about 3.7 arrests per day.

Cori Alonso-Yoder, a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and director of its Immigration Clinic, said the rise in immigration arrests is “a political message,” and part of a larger trend to punish states that aren’t in political alignment with the administration.

“The underlying mechanisms have been there, predating the election, and certainly predating the second Trump administration,” she said. “But what we’re seeing is sort of them being pushed to their ultimate limit.”

The increase in ICE activity in the state has led to several high-profile incidents in Maryland over the last six months, including that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was arrested by ICE agents in Baltimore on March 12 and wrongfully deported to El Salvador due to what the Trump administration called an “administrative error.”

Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center three days later, despite having a previous court order from an immigration judge protecting him from deportation to the country due to his risk of persecution if returned to El Salvador. He has since been returned to the U.S. to face human smuggling charges, and is currently being held in Tennessee.

And on Monday, Daniel Fuentes Espinal, a local pastor described as a pillar of his Talbot County community, was stopped and arrested by ICE while on his way to work. Fuentes Espinal was born in Honduras, and entered the U.S. illegally after fleeing from violence in the country in 2001. He has no criminal record.

After initially being held in a facility in Baltimore, he was transferred and is now being held in Louisiana.

Several Maryland leaders, such as Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-4th), have criticized these new tactics and the impact they have on immigrant communities.

“It is shocking that the Trump Administration is now targeting churches and other places of worship for ICE raids,” Ivey wrote in a statement in January. “The risk of racial profiling makes this unconscionable defiance of basic constitutional protections even worse.”

But others, like House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Harris (R-1st), have praised ICE for its increase in arrests.

“Criminal illegal aliens don’t belong in our communities. They belong in custody — and out of this country,” Harris wrote in a post on X earlier this month.

While Trump has said the deportations will target criminals, 40% of those who have been detained by ICE had no criminal record. About 45% detained had been convicted of a crime, while another 15% had criminal charges pending, according to ICE. 

Eastern Shore pastor detained by ICE transferred to Louisiana facility

ICE did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Eric Lopez, deputy program director at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which provides legal services for immigrants facing detention or deportation, said ICE has become “incredibly aggressive” in its tactics.

“What we’re seeing is an escalation in not just the number of arrests that are happening, but also an escalation in terms of who’s being detained, who’s being arrested, what practices are being used to arrest people,” Lopez said.

Lopez said that many of the people that the Amica Center has worked with have been arrested while going to work or attending regular ICE check-ins. The range of people getting arrested varies drastically, he added.

“People who have never had any contact with the criminal system, not even minor infractions,” he said. “We’re seeing high school students being arrested and transferred out of state. We’re seeing parents who’ve been here for decades, who have no prior contact with law enforcement, arrested and transferred out of state.”

Alonso-Yoder said the impacts of these daily arrests will last for generations.

“Families who are separated today, they are going to be feeling that separation for generations to come,” she said.

Alonso-Yoder emphasized “how flimsy this concept of doing immigration the ‘right way.’”

“Doing it legally has just been utterly upended,” she said, noting people who went through legal processes, like Abrego Garcia, or those waiting through the asylum process continue to get arrested.

“The administration has really obfuscated and confused what it means to be a criminal alien,” she said. “I think what we’re just really seeing is that there is not this massive group of criminals in the United States who were not supposed to be here.”

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Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.