by Jake Goldstein-Street, Washington State Standard
April 6, 2026
Federal immigration authorities arrested over 2,100 people in Washington between October and early March, according to newly released data.
This marks an intensification in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the state. The total arrests equate to about 13 a day during the five month period. They also account for over half of the more than 3,800 immigration arrests in Washington since Trump took office. Not everyone who is arrested ends up being deported.
As a comparison, during 14 months when Joe Biden was president, from mid-January 2023 to early March 2024, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested about 2,200 in Washington, the data shows.
And in the period from October 2024 to early March 2025, under both Biden and Trump, ICE arrested fewer than 400 people here.
The surge has been fueled in part by increasing arrests of immigrants without criminal records, despite Trump’s stated focus on criminals. Between Oct. 1 and March 10, about a quarter of those arrested had a criminal conviction, while about 26% faced pending charges. The proportion with convictions or pending charges is a slight drop from the rest of Trump’s term.
“This administration is detaining people indiscriminately — and in too many cases, unlawfully,” U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement Friday. “Moms and dads without any criminal records are being torn away from their kids. This administration isn’t going after the worst of the worst — they’re rounding up parents and farmworkers who haven’t committed a crime.”
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project hasn’t necessarily seen this increase reflected in its work representing immigrants in court, said Malou Chávez, the group’s executive director.
Still, the group for months has been filing 10-20 petitions in court per week challenging detentions, which Chávez called an “unprecedented” caseload.
And reported conditions at the long-embattled immigrant detention center in Tacoma “continue to be dire,” she said.
Latest glimpse at enforcement trends
The statistics were released this week by the Deportation Data Project out of the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers received nationwide information on immigration arrests via lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.
The figures are the first data the researchers have released since the beginning of December, giving an indication of how immigration enforcement has developed here in 2026.
But the data isn’t comprehensive. For one, it only includes ICE administrative arrests, excluding Customs and Border Protection. And, in some cases, no state is listed for individual arrest records. So the arrest figures for Washington could even be an undercount. They also don’t account for the rest of March. And more specific geographic information of arrests, such as cities or counties, isn’t available.
The data does give a sense of how the Trump administration has approached immigration enforcement in the aftermath of the operations in Minnesota that left two U.S. citizens dead at the hands of federal agents. Trump had suggested a “softer touch” after the unrest there, as the public increasingly expressed concerns about the president’s crackdown.
Arrests here appeared to drop after Alex Pretti’s late January death. In January, ICE arrested over 400 people. That dropped to roughly 225 in February, in line with national trends. The data shows just under 90 arrests in the first 10 days of March.
People of Mexican descent make up the majority of those arrested in Washington since October. Over 100 people with citizenship from Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela were arrested, as well.
The data also gives a sense of how many children ICE is arresting. More than 200 of the nearly 4,000 arrestees since Trump retook office were born in 2008 or later.
Chávez emphasized the toll the crackdown is taking on the families of those detained.
“We have heard stories of youth having to take on the role of caretakers for their younger siblings. We have also heard of teenagers having to take on jobs to be able to contribute financially,” she said.
“And then we hear about the level of fear that this is causing with so many unknowns and so many uncertainties, and there is both that heightened fear, feelings of defeat and despair,” she continued, “but also, I think, to a certain degree, what we’re also seeing is community members stepping up to support those that are impacted. And there is some hope.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Protecting immigrants was a key focus of the state Legislature this year.
Democratic lawmakers passed new laws to ban law enforcement from wearing face coverings, with a focus on ICE agents; require employers to notify workers of federal inspections; put guardrails on the use of automated license plate readers that federal authorities have used to track immigrants; and replace the term “alien” with “noncitizen” in state law.
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