Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, had already nearly doubled 2024's total of immigration arrests in North Carolina well before Border Patrol launched its November operation targeting Charlotte and the Triangle.
Data obtained and recently released by the Deportation Data Project show immigration arrests skyrocketed in the state and mostly were made through local jails, following new state laws requiring cooperation between local sheriffs and ICE.
Federal agents are following through with the Trump administration's directives to fill immigration jails — ICE made about 3,400 arrests in North Carolina from Jan. 20 through Oct. 15 this year compared to about 1,720 arrests in all of 2024, according to a WUNC analysis of the data.
The Deportation Data Project is a team of researchers based out of UCLA and UC Berkeley which filed Freedom of Information Act requests and sued the government to obtain federal data for 2025, 2024 and a part of 2023.
Note: The data in many cases include location identifiers, but not in all. The federal government has not released specific numbers, nor verified figures reported by the Deportation Data Project. WUNC identified North Carolina immigration arrests through a combination of attribution to counties, localities, metro areas and detention facilities where detainees were processed. Figures reported in this story are close estimates, but should not be considered exact.
Data for all of the U.S. published by the Deportation Data Project show that in this same time frame, around 75,000 people arrested by ICE did not have a criminal record, which is more than one-third of all ICE arrests, NPR reported.
ICE is a separate agency from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, whose green-vested agents targeted the state in last month's operation dubbed "Charlotte's Web". ICE primarily conducts arrests through agreements with local jails and is aided by the new North Carolina laws under House Bills 10 and 318.
Arrests double, less convicted criminals
In the nine months since President Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20:
- About 3,400 arrested, nearly double that of roughly 1,720 arrests made in all of 2024, roughly a 100% increase.
- Roughly 1,570 arrested since inauguration had criminal convictions. In total arrests, that's a 35% increase from at least 1,160 arrests with criminal convictions arrested in 2024.
- However, ICE is now arresting a smaller portion of convicted criminals, though they remain the largest category — in 2024, 67% of those arrested had convictions, compared with just 46% of arrests since inauguration.
- More noncitizens with no criminal record arrested — ICE arrested at least 615 people without a criminal record this year, despite Department of Homeland Security messaging that only immigrants who commit crimes will be arrested. That's nearly double the at least 312 people arrested without a record in all of 2024.
- ICE registers a nearly 300% increase in arrests of those with pending charges — noncitizens charged with crimes, but not convicted, represent roughly 1,230 arrests, or more than one-third of all 2025 arrests. That's compared to just around 250 such arrests in 2024. The data don't specify the charges.
- There were about 770 arrests in the Triangle and surrounding counties (Chatham, Johnston, Person, Vance, Granville, Lee, Alamance and Franklin) — about 55% of these arrests had criminal convictions, while about 5% had no criminal record, and the rest had pending charges, but no convictions.
