EXCLUSIVE — Federal immigration authorities have arrested nearly 150,000 illegal immigrants across the United States since the beginning of January, shortly before President Donald Trump took office and launched a mass deportation operation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Washington Examiner.

As of late July, ICE had taken into custody 149,084 people, including nearly 50,000 over the past eight weeks.

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Between January and April, ICE made 68,714 arrests, an average of roughly 17,000 per month. The numbers went up in the following months to 25,645 in May, 34,962 in June, and 19,763 as of mid-July.

Arrests have ramped up since a White House official blasted ICE officials in late May and commanded the federal police to go after all illegal immigrants, including those found in places that historically have not been targeted, according to David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank in Washington.

“The increase in ICE arrests in recent weeks is a direct result of Stephen Miller’s demand that ICE stop focusing on public safety threats and profile people going to work or attending their hearings,” Bier wrote in an email. “These arrests are creating chaos in the streets and explain President Trump’s falling approval rating on immigration.”

Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now resident fellow in law and policy for the Center of Immigration Studies in Washington, said the number should come as no surprise given that Trump is following through on what he has long promised to do, if elected.

“The president is doing what he said he was going to do. The president’s doing what an overwhelming majority of the people want him to do, which is taking criminal aliens off of the streets,” Arthur said in a phone call.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in late July that the government has “opened up the whole aperture of the immigration portfolio,” allowing federal police to focus on all illegal immigrants.

The latest arrest data suggest that ICE has averaged more than 700 arrests per day, twice as many as during 2024 when former President Joe Biden was in office, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, attorney and policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

“When we multiply by 365 days in a year, that puts them on track to do 258,000 arrests in one year,” Bush-Joseph said in a phone call Thursday.

The last time annual arrests topped 258,000 was in fiscal 2012, the final year of the Obama administration. ICE arrests under former President Joe Biden resulted in a total of 500,000 arrests during his four years in office, roughly the same range as Trump’s first term.

In former President Barack Obama’s first term, more than 1.2 million people were arrested from 2009 to 2012, while roughly half that figure was arrested during his second term.

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Trump has touted the 1 million figure as his goal for deported illegal immigrants in his first year. Arrests and deportations are separate things; not everyone arrested will be deported. Those who register with the CBP Home app and self-deport, and others who leave as work opportunities dry up or legal authorizations expire, would also count toward Trump’s overall target of 1 million.

“The true measure of the Trump immigration agenda is the degree that he shrinks the unauthorized population in the United States. And what we’ve seen is a significant number, 1 million plus … have left the United States,” Arthur said.