ICE Doubles Its Daily Detention Quota. Here's What's Behind the Surge.
Contributing writer Ella Stern reports on new data showing ICE detained over 10,000 people nationwide between June 27 and July 1, averaging 2,000 detentions a day, double the pace from earlier this year. Luis Argueta of Unidos MN and MONARCA connects the surge to industries reliant on undocumented labor and to the financial incentives driving private detention companies like CoreCivic, which is converting a shuttered Minnesota prison into an immigration facility as its profits climb.
ICE officials detained over 10,000 people between June 27 and July 1, according to reporting from the New York Times. The numbers in this five-day span average out to 2,000 detentions a day — double the roughly 1,000 daily detentions earlier this year.
The Times reported that the Trump administration wanted an increase in immigration enforcement arrests and that ICE leadership ordered officers to focus their efforts on detaining immigrants for deportation. ICE officials were told to make 2,000 detentions a day their new standard, according to the Times.
A Minnesota Reformer analysis of data from the Deportation Data Project puts the number of immigrants arrested and detained in Minnesota between Dec. 1, 2025, and March 10 of this year at 3,571. On June 27 alone, ICE officials nationwide detained over 2,400 people.
“When you attach a number, like a quota of 2,000 per day, what’s the incentive: targeted enforcement or just meeting the numbers that this administration has put forth?” said Luis Argueta, communications director at Unidos MN and MONARCA.
For Argueta, the increase was “confirmation of what we were already seeing [and] hearing from [the] community.” He said immigration detentions have increased again recently in Minnesota, and that he has heard from partners around the country about similar surges.
Looking at the spike in detentions, Argueta said he is thinking about industries like meatpacking, construction and agriculture, which employ large numbers of undocumented workers and which he said drive the United States economy. He is also thinking about who benefits from detentions, which he described as “a business model.”
CoreCivic, a private company that owns detention centers, announced last month that it would convert the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn., into an immigration detention facility. The prison, which has been closed since 2010, has a 1,600-person capacity, which is larger than the population of Appleton itself.
CoreCivic’s net income for the first quarter of this year was $37.9 million, up from $25.1 million during the same period in 2025.
“Our strong first quarter financial results were driven by the activation of four previously idled facilities since the first quarter of 2025,” CoreCivic President and CEO Patrick Swindle said in reporting the company’s financial results. “We anticipate increased demand from our federal, state, and local government partners in the second half of the year.”
As ICE increases its detentions, it is also keeping them quieter, according to the Times. This contrasts with its immigration enforcement campaigns in Chicago and Los Angeles, which officials announced before they began. It also differs from Operation Metro Surge, which was marked by significant community response, as Minnesotans blew whistles and flooded Signal chats with messages about ICE activity.
“There was even a point [during Metro Surge] where Bovino himself actually said [Minnesotans] are very difficult, because they’re out there, they’re prepared, they’re trained,” Argueta said, referring to Gregory Bovino, former commander-at-large of the United States Border Patrol.
As ICE agents continue to carry out their new 2,000-detention quota around the country, “the best thing that people can do is keep in mind that the Constitution protects everyone,” Argueta said. “It’s so important now more than ever to know your constitutional rights, to know exactly how to respond. [Dealing with] an agency that has no checks and balances, it’s the people that are showing up to become the checks and balances.”
Ella Stern is a freelance journalist and contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. She welcomes reader responses at estern10@gmail.com.