UCLA Report Shows ICE Crackdown Is Hitting Asian Communities Hard

UCLA’s recent Asian American Studies Center report is awfully sobering. Arrests of Asian immigrants have more than tripled compared to last year. In the first half of 2024, there were just over 1,000 arrests. This year during that same stretch of time, there were more than 3,700. Most of them happened in May and June, as thousands of people were pulled into detention almost all at once.

Despite Trump’s promises during his campaign that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would only focus on the “worst of the worst,” the data tells a completely different story. Instead of targeting serious criminals, ICE swept up many who had no record at all. Arrests of immigrants with clean records jumped 307 percent. By summer, those who had no criminal history at all were being detained at twice the rate of those who had convictions.

And once those people were in detention, things got even harder for them. On average, each detainee was moved through nearly three different facilities, resulting in families scrambling to track down where their loved ones had been taken, sometimes for weeks, and not getting any clear answers. Lawyers were left chasing after cases while their clients were being shipped hundreds of miles away.

More than half of these arrests occurred across just five states. California alone accounted for a quarter of all Asian immigrant detentions. Texas had 14 percent, New York had 10 percent, and Oklahoma and Pennsylvania made up the rest of the top five. The groups hit hardest were from China, India, and Vietnam, which also happen to be the largest Asian communities in the U.S.

So, the big picture looks pretty grim. According to UCLA’s research, ICE is expanding, detention centers are expanding, and for Asian immigrant communities, the fear is only getting worse.

Photo by NARA & DVIDS Public Domain Archive