The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency arrested nearly 20,000 illegal migrants in the Washington, DC, area since January 2025, the Washington Post says.
The arrests ranged throughout D.C. as well as the surrounding areas in Maryland and Virginia from the start of Trump’s second administration through March 20, according to the Post.
While the rate of arrests in D.C. itself has fallen, the arrests have stayed about the same in the surrounding areas, the paper added.
The number is an amazing divergence over President Biden’s final year in office when ICE only recorded 3,800 arrests in the area.
Still, the numbers in D.C. would have been higher were it not for another activist judge who intervened in December. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that ICE could not arrest illegal migrants without a warrant. The Obama-appointed judge accused ICE of a “systemic failure” to follow the law.
ICE averaged 700 arrests a month between January and August of 2025 and that increased by 100 from September to March of this year. And in Maryland between September and January, about 800 were arrested. After August, the number hovered around 500 a month in Maryland.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not reported how many of those arrested in the area have already been deported. But DHS added that the number of migrants who have self-deported soared during Trump’s first year back in office.
“In President Trump’s first year back in office, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations,” then-Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Kristi Noem said in January.
In January, Noem also noted that the Trump administration has recovered more than 100,000 unaccompanied migrant children that the Biden administration had somehow lost track of during his woeful administration.
Noem wrote in a press release at the time:
Under President Trump, DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services have located 132,720 unaccompanied children that the Biden administration lost. Too many of these children were exploited and abused before, during, and after being trafficked over our borders. All told, the Biden administration lost more than 450,000 children because of its open border policies. We will continue to ramp up efforts and will not stop until every last child is found.
Late last month, Noem was replaced as DHS Secretary. Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as her replacement.
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