ICE in Georgia: Convicted criminals make up less than a third of all arrests

The Trump administration maintained a high pace of immigration arrests in Georgia through mid-October, solidifying the state’s role as an enforcement juggernaut.

But fewer of the more recent apprehensions by federal agents are targeting convicted criminals, despite the Trump administration’s rhetoric of going after only the worst of the worst.

As the number of people arrested by ICE in Georgia solely over immigration violations has grown, so has the number of “at-large” arrests, the agency’s term for the apprehension of immigrants in courthouses, on sides of roads, or at homes and workplaces, according to federal data.

From the start of the second Trump administration through Oct. 15, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded more than 8,500 confirmed arrests in Georgia, according to the most recently available agency data. That makes Georgia the fourth-most prolific state for ICE arrests nationwide, behind only three states with significantly larger foreign-born populations: Texas (49,000 arrests), Florida (20,000) and California (18,000).

“There has always been a very pro-enforcement culture” in Georgia, said Sarah Owings, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney. “We have always had, and continue to have, robust cooperation and collaboration with ICE.”

For its analysis of ICE’s performance and changing tactics in Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution relied on an immigration arrests data set obtained from the federal government through a lawsuit by the Deportation Data Project, a group of lawyers and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley law school.

Federal immigration agents’ more aggressive tactics and more visible presence in the interior of the country recently sparked a new wave of backlash and protests after the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents.

Alongside other cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, Minneapolis has seen a mass mobilization of both ICE and Border Patrol agents on its streets — a level of escalation hitherto unseen in Atlanta.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and Border Patrol, did not respond to a request for comment from the AJC about the number of Georgia arrests or the agency’s changing tactics.

Fewer criminals arrested

In January 2025, 43% of the people arrested by ICE in Georgia were convicted criminals, according to the federal data. By October, that number tumbled to 32%.

ICE’s increasingly wide-net approach to immigration enforcement is a national phenomenon, though noncriminals appear to be more prone to arrest in Georgia.

From January to June, roughly 40% of all immigrants arrested by ICE in the U.S. were convicted criminals (fewer than 37% in Georgia). From July to mid-October, just over 32% of ICE arrestees had been convicted of a crime (around 27% in Georgia).

Overall, fewer than a third of all recorded ICE arrests in Georgia in 2025 targeted convicted criminals.

“They want people who are not criminals to also be caught up in this, because they want to scare everybody,” Owings said. “ICE is deciding their new policy is to simply take everybody in.”

The month with the smallest share of criminal ICE arrestees in Georgia came in September, when just 19% of the people apprehended by the agency had criminal convictions. That month, Georgia made national news for being the staging ground of the largest single-site workplace raid in U.S. history, with immigration authorities arresting 475 workers at a construction site on the Hyundai Metaplant campus near Savannah.

September was also the month on record with the largest tally of ICE arrests in Georgia: about 1,400.

Minors have also been affected.

A total of 112 children were arrested by ICE in Georgia since Trump took office. Eleven of them were 5 years old or younger.

More arrests in the community

Georgia is a heavy-hitter when it comes to immigration enforcement, in part because state law mandates close collaboration between local sheriffs’ offices and ICE. The consequence is that when immigrants without legal status are booked into county jails, even for minor traffic offenses, they are all but guaranteed to be transferred into ICE custody.

But more and more ICE arrests are happening outside jails and in the wider community.

Arrests of people not already in the custody of another law enforcement agency made up just over 38% of all ICE arrests in Georgia from January to June. From July through mid-October, that number increased to more than 64%.

Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Atlanta-based Latino Community Fund, said her organization has in recent months been receiving regular reports from community members of ICE presence at workplaces like car washes and nail salons.

“ICE has moved beyond the collaboration with local jails, police departments, sheriffs’ offices,” she said. “That increases the stress, the fear, and the uncertainty. It’s like none of us are wanted here.”

How many deportations?

As of mid-October, nearly 60% of all the Trump administration’s Georgia ICE arrestees had been deported by the agency — more than 5,000 individual deportations.

The 10 nationalities that account for the biggest numbers of Georgia ICE arrestees are Mexico (36% of all immigrants arrested in the state), Guatemala (20%), Venezuela (11%), Honduras (8%), Colombia (4%), Nicaragua (4%), South Korea (3%), El Salvador (2%) and Peru (1%).