Portside

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

The reason: a mandate to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants per day, as part of a change in political strategy by the White House to shift enforcement resources from the suddenly quiet southern border to inside the country’s cities and towns.

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: 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 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, Sandweg 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 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 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, 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, 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 dan.glaun@globe.com. Follow him @dglaun. Yoohyun Jung can be reached at y.jung@globe.com.