Immigration & Border · The Record
ICE arrests in New York City nearly tripled to 9,619; conviction share fell to 21.5%
White House border czar Tom Homan said the build-up puts teams into neighborhoods to find people who did not want to be found. A city report records more than half of New York detentions at an immigration courthouse.
A New York City report on city agencies' interactions with federal immigration authorities recorded more than 5,500 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between Jan. 20, 2025 and March 10, 2026, and a 71% increase in immigration enforcement action during the second Trump administration, ABC7 New York reported. More than half of those detentions took place at 26 Federal Plaza, the immigration court building in Lower Manhattan, according to the same report. A statement quoted by ABC7 New York alongside the findings said they "will strengthen City agencies' protocols when interacting with federal authorities."
Daily Pol did not retrieve the city document itself. The detention count, the 71% figure and the courthouse share are used here as reported by ABC7 New York, and the city-side findings below as reported by amNewYork.
The claim
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, has described the build-up in different terms. In remarks published by Breitbart on June 8, 2026 - that date is taken from the article's URL path, because the excerpt available here carries no dateline - Homan said: "I'm going to send more agents to New York, because now rather than one guy arresting one bad guy in a jail, now we've got to send a whole team into the neighborhood to find this person that didn't want to be found, because the officer safety reasons, you know?"
He also said, "You're going to see more ICE agents you've ever seen in New York City, and it's coming." He said the change followed the loss of arrests made inside county jails.
The record
Federal arrest records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a nonprofit that files public records requests for immigration data, and reported by NY1 show ICE arrested more than 9,600 people in New York City since the beginning of the Trump administration. After six months the figure was 3,301 non-citizens; after nearly 14 months it had nearly tripled, to 9,619, NY1 reported.
Composition, per the same records as reported by NY1: nearly 63% of those arrested had only immigration violations, with no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. About one in five had criminal convictions. Level 1 threat designations accounted for 6.9% of arrests in the city, with 5.2% at Level 2 and 9.4% at Level 3. Over the period NY1 reported, the share of those arrested who had criminal convictions moved down, from 27% to 21.5%. The passage available here does not date those two percentages.
On location, the New York State Office of the Attorney General stated that in May 2025 ICE began making mass arrests of immigrants in New York City, including people who "came to 26 Federal Plaza for immigration court and routine check-in appointments."
Nationally, TRAC at Syracuse University recorded 65,765 people in ICE detention on July 11, 2026, of whom 46,436, or 70.6%, had no criminal conviction.
Analysis
The two accounts describe different places. Homan's stated mechanism is a search in neighborhoods for a person who did not want to be found; the largest single location in the city's detention record is a courthouse people entered on their own for scheduled appointments, per the Attorney General's account. Testing the stated rationale against the stated record is the point here - it does not establish what Homan believed or intended.
The conviction-share trend runs the same way. As the total rose toward 9,619, the share with criminal convictions moved down rather than up, per NY1. A build-up that was in practice selecting for people with convictions would be expected to move that share the other way.
Two limits on that comparison. First, the counts are not the same measure: ABC7's more than 5,500 are detentions recorded in the city report, while NY1's 9,619 are ICE arrests drawn from Deportation Data Project records over a near-identical window. The roughly 4,100 gap reflects different definitions and collection methods, and the two figures should not be read as one dataset. Second, TRAC's 70.6% is a national detained population on a single day, not New York arrests; it is useful only as a baseline, and on that baseline New York's composition does not look like a local anomaly. Throughout, these are civil immigration cases, and an arrest or detention is not a criminal charge.
The city's own record is not clean either. amNewYork reported that the Correction Department had been sending daily reports to federal immigration authorities about the national origin of certain noncitizens in custody since at least 2015 - a practice that predates this administration by two presidencies. amNewYork also reported an account of "seven Homeland Security Investigations officers carrying guns and wearing face masks" and stated that "Homeland Security personnel used deceptive tactics by initially identifying themselves as FDNY officers."
Separately, detainees have sued over conditions at 26 Federal Plaza. The Attorney General's office stated that the lawsuit alleges people are held in small rooms for days in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, with a single toilet and sink, no beds or sleeping mats and two meals per day; that medical personnel are not available overnight; and that family and attorneys are not permitted to visit. Those are allegations in pending litigation and are not established fact. The Attorney General's office stated that recent detainees included a seven-year-old child arrested with her mother and brother.
The build-up has continued. WSHU Public Radio reported that confirmed sightings of ICE activity in New York City more than doubled in July.
Comment
ICE did not respond to NY1's request for comment, NY1 reported. As of drafting, Daily Pol has no logged reply from Homan, ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, and no request for comment is recorded as sent; editors document that contact before publication.
A checkable prediction
If NY1 or the Deportation Data Project publishes an updated New York City arrest breakdown on or before Dec. 31, 2026, the share of arrestees with criminal convictions will be reported below 27%, the higher of the two figures NY1 reported. If it is reported at or above 27%, this prediction fails.