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ICE MANDATE TO ARREST 3,000 IMMIGRANTS PER DAY FUELS RAIDS IN
MASSACHUSETTS COMMUNITIES  
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Dan Glaun and Yoohyun Jung
June 10, 2025
The Boston Globe
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_ “It doesn’t matter if you have a criminal record now, they’re
going to detain you,” said Carmen Bello, an immigration lawyer based
in Boston. _

Todd Lyons, acting director of US Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, addressed the media at the John Joseph Moakley United
States Courthouse on June 2., Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

 

The Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically ramp up
deportations has immigration agents
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swarming into the heart of Massachusetts communities, sweeping up
droves of people
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in the country illegally — whether they have criminal records or
not.

The reason: a mandate to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants per day,
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political strategy by the White House to shift enforcement resources
from the suddenly quiet southern border to inside the country’s
cities and towns.
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The move has had a profound impact in Massachusetts, where US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in May arrested 1,461
people, nearly half of whom had no criminal record and roughly 4
percent who were convicted of a violent crime, according to a Globe
review of ICE data.

The data, which the agency provided to the Globe following a request
for charge details of the people arrested last month, complicates what
the Trump administration had previously said
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That they will “carry out mass deportations — starting with the
worst of the worst.”

Instead, what has happened as a result of this new strategy, data
show, is drastically more detentions in the interior of the country,
in cities such as Milford, Chelsea, Worcester, and Boston.

“It doesn’t matter if you have a criminal record now, they’re
going to detain you,” said Carmen Bello, an immigration lawyer based
in Boston.

The arrest quota, immigration analysts said, has put immense pressure
on ICE officials to boost their numbers. Combined with a precipitous
drop in border crossings, the policy has led to significantly more
arrests, including so-called collateral arrests of immigrants
encountered by agents in pursuit of other targets.

According to agency data, of the nearly 1,500 immigrants arrested in
Massachusetts in May, 17 percent had a criminal conviction and 37
percent had pending criminal charges.

The agency provided the Globe charge details for 752 of the 790 with
convictions or pending criminal cases. Two of the convictions were for
murder, and 111 were either convicted, or had pending charges, of
aggravated assault. There were 284 cases involving violent offenses
such as sexual assault, robbery, domestic violence, and burglary.
Fifty-one were immigration violations.

It’s unclear how the remaining 671 people ended up on ICE’s radar.
Officials have emphasized that anyone in the country without
authorization is subject to removal.

“Make no mistake, ICE is going to keep doing this,” acting ICE
director Todd Lyons said at a recent press conference in Boston.
“We’re going to keep coming back.”

While ICE has not released official tallies of arrests since President
Trump took office earlier this year, data on the number of people the
agency has detained help illustrate the surge in enforcement.

While ICE has not released official tallies of arrests since President
Trump took office earlier this year, data on the number of people the
agency has detained help illustrate the surge in enforcement.

At one point in 2021, US Customs and Border Protection registered
nearly 30,000 detention intakes in a month at the border, while ICE
detained fewer than 4,000 people within the country, according to ICE
data. Generally, CBP apprehends people at the border and ICE covers
the rest of the country, though agents can sometimes be assigned
outside their usual areas.

Border detentions began to decline after former president Joe Biden
implemented asylum restrictions
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_to stem illegal border crossings, and they dropped off a cliff after
Trump won the 2024 election. In May 2025, ICE booked more than 23,000
people, while Border Patrol booked fewer than 3,000.

It’s a noticeable shift in the political framing of immigration
enforcement, said John Sandweg, who served as acting director of ICE
under President Barack Obama. Historically, the number that drew
attention was deportations — the actual expulsion of people from the
country. But deportations take time, particularly for long-term
immigrants entitled to hearings in immigration courts that have a
backlog of 3.6 million cases,
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said.

The Trump administration has instead focused on raw arrest totals,
including so-called at-large arrests, in which people are taken
directly from communities. Border patrol and FBI resources have been
shifted to assist ICE with interior enforcement. And the agency now
says it is arresting 1,600 people per day.

It is a strategy that has led to heightened tensions between federal
authorities and immigrant communities. In Los Angeles, demonstrators
protesting ICE raids have clashed with federal agents and local police
— confrontations that only intensified
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after Trump this week deployed the National Guard.

And it has led to overcrowding at ICE’s detention facilities. The
holding cells at the Burlington field office, where detainees are held
before being transferred to longer term facilities, are reaching
capacity. People being held there
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have reported to their lawyers that they are being packed in a cell
with dozens of other men.

Three women who slept at the facility did so in one 8-by-10 cell,
shivering under mylar blankets, one crammed under a sink and next to a
toilet, one of them told her lawyers.

The Plymouth County Correctional Facility, the only Massachusetts
facility contracted to house immigration detainees,
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has seen its population increase steadily since the start of last
year, and has continued to climb through the first four months of
Trump’s presidency. Though it’s contracted with ICE to hold 250
people, federal data show the facility held an average of 424 ICE
detainees as of June 5.

Bello, the immigration lawyer, said she believes the spike in
detentions is leading to clients being transferred out of state
because of a lack of capacity in Plymouth.

“The reason that’s happening is they don’t have enough beds,”
she said.

With border crossings low, ICE must go after immigrants who previously
were not a priority, including those with pending immigration court
hearings, and so-called collateral arrests of immigrants encountered
by agents in pursuit of other targets, Sandweg said.

“They’re putting this tremendous pressure on them to get 3,000
arrests,” Sandweg said. “You cannot do 3,000 arrests and focus on
criminal populations.”

Jace Calderas, a former ICE agent who runs a security consulting firm
based in San Antonio, told the Globe he “never saw goals that
high” in his career. Calderas worked in federal immigration
enforcement for 24 years, before retiring in 2016.

“I also never saw immigration enforcement prioritized as it is
currently,” Calderas wrote in a text message. “Having multiple
agencies and even military support shows a level of commitment I never
saw.”

That expanded targeting is profoundly affecting immigrants in
Massachusetts, according to advocates and attorneys. Many are afraid
to go to work, school, or court, including immigrants here legally who
are worried for their undocumented relatives.

As ICE apprehends more people, the Trump administration is seeking
shortcuts to deportation without going through immigration courts,
said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy
Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Some of those
measures, such as the use of the Alien Enemies Act,
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have affected relatively few people and been tied up in court, she
said.

But others could be broadly applied. Immigration law allows the
government to deport people in the country for less than two years
without court proceedings, in a process called “expedited
removal.” Biden registered record use of expedited removal at the
border, in an effort to stem migrant entries, Bush-Joseph said.

But the Trump administration is using expedited removal in the
interior of the country, creating a pathway for faster deportations,
she said.

“It’ll take them time to ramp up, but I think they’re laying the
groundwork for increasing the numbers moving forward,” she said.

Dan Glaun can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @dglaun
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[email protected].

* ICE in Massachusetts
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