Jacob Edwards
Connector Contributor
In this modern day and age, it seems we are constantly bombarded by reports of the deportations of illegal immigrants. Although within that are constantly conflicting reports with a wide range of numbers. So, what is the true objective count?
The office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE for short, claims on their website that they have arrested a total 74,082 noncitizens. A stated 12,025 of them are also being convicted of an aggravated felony. Further investigation, however, shows that ICE had ceased publicly publishing their annual report, the latest being for 2024. ICE does still release a monthly encounter report by state, although it is unclear if the previously stated arrest numbers are up to date or reliant on the 2024 statistic.
There have still been a number of reports of ICE increasing their surveillance and their aggressiveness in their enforcement. In early July 2026, ABC7 reported that 10,000 people had been arrested by ICE in a five-day span following a push by the Trump Administration. Thanks to the data collected by the Deportation Data Project, created by the students and faculty of UC Berkeley and UCLA, it seems that the number has gone down through late July and August.
The Deportation Data Project shows not only the recent arrests by ICE, but also the arrest data from the last couple years. Most of said data concludes a rapid increase in deportations by ICE at the beginning of 2025, only slowing down at the end of 2025 going into 2026. Starting in 2025, the number of documented cases was 10,678 for the month of January, although at the current date it is said that the number could be around 41,000 cases just in the month of July alone. That’s an over 550% increase in cases in over a year and unfortunately, it is unknown how much more of an increase we may see in the upcoming months.
The Trump Administration has continued to support ICE in all their actions and has shared no plan of slowing the deportation efforts anytime soon. President Trump himself stated in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly that the US has admitted zero illegal immigrants into the United States in the past 16 months. Trump also stated that he sent his “crime busters” to Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana to help reduce criminal activity in those areas. Homeland Security followed up by releasing a statement regarding an arrest of more than 120 illegal immigrants at a Memphis night club on Aug. 30, although they only released the names of five criminal individuals arrested during the event.
Coming closer to home, as of Sept. 20, ICE officers have escalated their presence in New Bedford and the southern coast of Massachusetts at large. Only eight arrests have been confirmed. Lowell itself has had ICE officers patrolling the streets as far back as 2019, with ICE maintaining its worksite inspections across the city, although the number of documented arrests has decreased as of late. Despite this, the people of Lowell still believe the city isn’t doing all it can to protect them from the potential threats that ICE poses to them and the city at large. Several groups, including students at the Lowell High School, have organized protests to help spread the word and bring attention to the issue.
Lowell is home to a variety of different people, a lot of which either have or whose family have immigrated from other parts of the world. The vast majority come from Cambodia and Southeast Asia. One such citizen is Izaiah Roman of Lowell, who stated, “ICE is doing this as a scare tactic, especially around the university to scare students who are here on Visas”.
There is hope, however, with the decrease in ICE’s presence in the city showing that progress is being made. Many citizens of Lowell, however, still have been very vocal with their opinions on ICE being in their city, both in public and to their representatives, though it is only a matter of time before we see if those cries fall on deaf ears, or are headed by those who need to hear it.
