15K Deported In SoCal Immigration Crackdown: UCLA Study

LOS ANGELES, CA — Nearly 15,000 people arrested by federal immigration agents across Southern California since the beginning of 2025 have been deported, according to a new UCLA study that found immigration enforcement remained elevated more than a year after the Trump administration launched its crackdown in Los Angeles.

At the height of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge in June and July 2025, 75% of those arrested were eventually deported, according to researchers with the Deportation Data Project, a collaboration between UCLA and the UC Berkeley School of Law.

The study examined ICE arrests, detention and deportations across seven Southern California counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Los Angeles accounted for one-third of all arrests made outside jails and prisons, by far the largest share of any city in the region.

"The extraordinary impact of the surge is now clear. Nearly 15,000 people have been deported from the region," said Graeme Blair, a UCLA political science professor and co-director of the project.

"Now we can also quantify what immigrant communities here have felt since the surge began in the summer of 2025: that enforcement never stopped. Over 1,000 noncitizens were arrested just in July 2026."

The findings highlight a dramatic shift in federal immigration enforcement toward arrests in neighborhoods, workplaces, immigration courthouses and at routine ICE check-ins.

Previously, ICE relied more heavily on taking custody of people already being held in jails and prisons, researchers said.

"DHS leaders made Los Angeles a testing ground in June 2025 for the new at-large arrest strategy, sending immigration agents out into communities, Home Depot parking lots and immigration courthouses, and to make arrests at regular ICE check-ins," Blair said.

The study found that immigration arrests spread across much of Southern California, with Santa Ana, San Bernardino, Santa Maria and Camarillo among the cities experiencing significant numbers of arrests outside custodial settings.

Lompoc and Victorville also recorded high arrest numbers, although nearly all of those cases involved people transferred from federal prisons.

Deportations also occurred rapidly.

Of the people arrested between January 2025 and May 2026, 62% were deported within 60 days of their arrests, while just 7% were released from immigration detention within that period.

Researchers also found a sharp increase in arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions or final deportation orders.

At the peak of the crackdown in June 2025, arrests of people without final removal orders from immigration judges were nearly 1,400% higher than 2024 levels.

Arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions increased by more than 3,400% over the same period.

"Increasingly, noncitizens across the country who had no reason to expect they could be deported have been targeted, and it was folks in the Los Angeles region who bore the brunt of these new enforcement priorities first," Blair said.

"These are people immigration judges have not ordered removed, many with legitimate grounds to challenge their removals."

The study also found that nearly 300 of those deported were sent to countries other than their countries of citizenship.

Most were deported to Mexico, while others were sent to Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras, Ghana and Eswatini, according to researchers.

The findings suggest that the immigration crackdown has continued well beyond the initial surge that began in June 2025.

Arrests began increasing again in June 2026, reaching slightly more than half the level recorded during the previous summer's peak. More than 1,000 people were arrested in July 2026 alone.

The findings are part of the Deportation Data Project's third analysis of federal immigration enforcement records. The researchers obtained individual-level ICE data through litigation to examine who is being arrested, how long people remain in detention and how often arrests lead to deportation.

Read more about the study here.