Demonstrators block an entrance to the state Senate chamber at the Capitol. New ICE data shows about 11,000 people have been arrested by the agency in New York since last year.
Will Waldron/Times Union
ALBANY — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more people in New York in the months of November, December and January than they did at any other time since 2022, a Times Union analysis of new federal apprehension data shows.
ICE apprehended about 1,400 people a month during that three-month span. While many arrests are not labeled with specific locations, the data shows numerous apprehensions took place at Federal Plaza Immigration Court in New York City, Erie County, a Canadian border crossing in Clinton County, Onondaga County and at the Wende Correctional Facility, a state prison near Buffalo.
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People demonstrate in front of the New York Capitol in March in favor of legislation called “New York for All” to limit cooperation between local police and immigration authorities.
Tim Fanning / Times Union
The data, which is being made public as the result of a public records request by the Deportation Data Project, gives the most detailed look at ICE activity in New York in recent months. It comes as New York is debating a number of policy changes to respond to ICE enforcement in the state.
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said Wednesday that ICE activity in New York began increasing at the end of former President Joe Biden’s administration and has continued to escalate under President Donald J. Trump’s administration.
“We have seen more enforcement happening across the entire state,” he said. “We have seen an increase in immigration enforcement and not just in the courthouses.”
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ICE arrested about 11,000 people in New York in 2025, more than twice the number of people the agency apprehended the year before, but similar to arrest numbers for 2023, the data shows. Roughly 4% of all ICE arrests in the U.S. last year took place in New York. In comparison, 26% of ICE arrests last year happened in Texas, 10% in Florida, 9% in California and 4% in Georgia.
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About 3,000 people have been apprehended by the agency in New York so far this year through early March, the data shows.
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Many of those people have now left the country. The data suggest about 65% of those arrested by ICE in New York during Trump’s second term have been removed from the U.S. or voluntarily departed.
New York has not been the site of a high-profile immigration surge like the ones that unfolded in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago, despite New York City’s large immigrant population. Nevertheless, ICE arrests have unfolded nearly every day across the state — often in ways that don’t get publicized or garner attention.
ICE has conducted many arrests at courthouses in New York City and around the state when immigrants present for check-ins for their pending cases. ICE agents have also appeared at residences, work sites and traffic stops to detain individuals.
In other notable cases, ICE apprehended 57 people at a manufacturing plant in central New York in September in the largest immigration raid in upstate New York since Trump returned to the White House. In December, ICE arrested Afghan nationals in Albany and around the state after a shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., by an Afghan immigrant.
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Supporters of an an Afghani family are seen outside the Malta U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Malta in December. The family and their lawyer had an interview with ICE inside.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
In February, ICE agents posed as police officers searching for a missing person to gain access to the residence of a Columbia University student and arrest her. That month, border enforcement officials also apprehended a nearly blind refugee in Buffalo and released him outside a coffee shop at night without notifying his family or attorney. After being reported missing, he was later found dead. His death has been ruled a homicide involving complications with his ulcer precipitated by dehydration and hypothermia, according to the local medical examiner.
About one third of people arrested by ICE in New York during the Trump administration had pending criminal charges or a conviction, while most had only an immigration violation, the data shows.
In public announcements, ICE has highlighted multiple arrests in New York this year of individuals it claimed were sought for crimes like attempted murder, distribution of child sexual abuse material, assault and gang activity.
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“ERO is committed to safeguarding our communities and maintaining the integrity of our immigration system,” said ICE Buffalo Enforcement and Removal Operations acting Field Office Director Tammy Marich in late February.
Federal agents enter Nutrition Bar Confectioners in Cato on Sept. 4 to conduct the largest ICE raid in upstate New York since President Donald J. Trump returned to the White House.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York
ICE’s arrestees in New York have been overwhelmingly male, with more from Ecuador than any other country.
On average, the typical immigrant arrested by ICE in New York under Trump’s administration is 31 years old. But the arrests included about 600 minors, including two 2-year-olds, the data shows.
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Democratic lawmakers and advocates rallied at the state Capitol Wednesday, pushing for the state to take new steps to protect New Yorkers from ICE enforcement. They said these arrests are changing communities across the state, impacting the workforce and keeping immigrants at home.
State Sen. Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, said her constituents report having trouble finding construction workers, child care and home health aides, landscapers and seasonal restaurant employees.
“Basically, they’re admitting that they know they’ve been hiring people without appropriate immigration status, but that’s how they get the work done,” she said.
State Sen. Michelle Hinchey, a Democrat, said farm laborers across the Hudson Valley, which she represents, are scared to go to work. Acknowledging immigration raids have aggravated existing farm labor shortages, the Trump administration implemented changes to a temporary visa program that can be used to hire foreign farm workers.
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Demonstrators who support legislation to protect immigrants from deportation block the Assembly chamber entrance on Wednesday at the Capitol. New ICE data shows thousands of migrants arrested by ICE in New York have been removed from the U.S. or voluntarily left.
Will Waldron/Times Union
Immigrant children are missing school, and adults are reporting fewer crimes out of fear of interacting with law enforcement, Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition added.
Other than farmers, Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said he mostly hasn’t heard complaints from his western New York constituents about ICE activity in the state.
“Our conference believes they have a very important mission,” the Republican said. “They’ve been tasked with enforcing laws that for many, many, many decades have not been enforced and that’s why this is so challenging because it just hasn’t been done. We’ve let millions of people into this country illegally.”
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While some ICE tactics have been “egregious and wrong,” he said, generally New York has offered too much government protection and support to individuals without legal immigration status.
Trump was swept into a second term in part by public support for his agenda to crack down on undocumented immigrants and increase border security. But approval of Trump’s immigration actions has waned over his second term, according to polls, particularly in recent months after the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents in Minnesota.
ICE officers clash with protesters after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
Aaron Lavinsky/TNS
Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul met with Tom Homan, who was Trump’s top border official and now oversees ICE, to discuss her concerns about the federal immigration enforcement and warn that there is no need for a surge in enforcement in New York. (Homan, who is from western New York, also was in charge of deportation operations in former President Barack Obama’s administration.)
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Hochul and lawmakers are now considering a series of new immigration policies that they may include in the state budget or pass as separate legislation, said Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie. A main focus is addressing cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration authorities, the Democrat added.
His chamber is concerned by “the coordination and cooperation with law enforcement that could be used in far too aggressive a manner” and “tearing families apart,” he said.
The Legislature is also discussing a ban on 287(g) agreements that outline partnerships between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities, a bill to prohibit the masking of law enforcement agents and other ideas.
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Demonstrators who support legislation called “New York for All” to limit cooperation between local police and immigration authorities block the Senate chamber entrance at the state Capitol on Wednesday. Most of the people arrested by ICE in New York since last year have had no criminal conviction, recent data shows.
Will Waldron/Times Union