ICE begins 2026 with high pace of arrests in Georgia

Minnesota emerged as a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s mass deportations campaign in late 2025, as thousands of federal agents fanned across the state to find and arrest immigrants who lacked legal authorization.

To date, Georgia has not seen the chaos and violence triggered by the mass operation in that northern state. But since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, far more populated Georgia has accounted for more than two times the number of immigration arrests as those higher-profile efforts in Minnesota. Overall, Georgia ranks as a top state in the country for enforcement, updated federal data shows.

From the start of the second Trump administration through March 10, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded more than 13,600 confirmed arrests in Georgia, according to the most recently available agency data. Georgia has a higher concentration of foreign-born residents than Minnesota, which had 5,900 ICE arrests.

That makes Georgia now the fifth-most prolific state for ICE arrests nationwide, behind only four states with significantly larger foreign-born populations: Texas (85,900 arrests), Florida (36,700), California (32,800) and New York (13,800). Minnesota ranks 18th .

As of mid-October, Georgia was in fourth place for arrests, ahead of New York.

Immigration authorities have picked up the pace of arrests in early 2026 relative to same time period last year.

In February 2026, ICE made on average 41 arrests per day in Georgia, up from 22 arrests per day during February 2025, the Trump administration’s first full month back in office. That’s a more than 85% year-over-year increase.

The surge in arrests has resulted in busier immigrant detention facilities. On Feb. 1, Georgia ICE detention facilities held roughly 3,300 people, up from about 2,800 on Feb. 1, 2025. Last year, the Trump administration secured $45 billion to significantly expand ICE’s detention infrastructure, including in Georgia.

For its analysis of ICE’s evolving performance 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.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and Border Patrol, did not comment on the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in Georgia. The spokesperson said Trump is fulfilling his vow to remove dangerous individuals from the country.

In the absence of a Minneapolis-style mass ICE deployment, what’s helping to boost Georgia immigration arrests is a system of mandatory cooperation between local and federal law enforcement, as laid out by a 2024 Georgia immigration law. Immigrants who lack legal status and are booked into jails anywhere in Georgia are flagged to and held for immigration agents, even if their arrest is because of a traffic infraction.

Heber Ovando and Bailey Espinoza, a Buford couple, recently saw their livelihoods unwind as a result of ICE’s unobstructed access to Georgia lockups.

On March 11, Ovando was pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign shortly after he left a renovation job in Carroll County, Espinoza said. Because he was driving without a license, police arrested Ovando, a Guatemalan national, and took him to Carroll County Jail, where officials notified ICE.

According to the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, jailers released Ovando into ICE custody three days later. He is currently being held at the ICE Stewart Detention Center in South Georgia. An immigration judge there recently granted Ovando voluntary departure, a mechanism that falls short of a formal deportation (which triggers reentry bans) but will still leave Ovando far away from his home of eight years.

“He has to leave the country all because he had to go to work,” Espinoza said.

Heber Ovando and Bailey Espinoza with their two daughters.

An Atlanta-native, Espinoza said the couple had filed an application to adjust Ovando’s status through their marriage last year, but did not hear back.

Amid increased enforcement, they tried being careful. Ovando only drove to and from work, with Espinoza handling the driving on weekends. He had stopped using a work van, a type of vehicle the couple worried could be targeted for enforcement because of its association with immigrant workers. Ovando’s worksites were often hours from home, but “every single day he came home,” Espinoza said.

That changed last month.

In the current environment, Espinoza said, immigrants like her husband “have to be 100% perfect” to avoid the threat of detention.

But Ovando drove while unlicensed to support the couple and their children, two U.S. citizen daughters aged 1 and 8, Espinoza said. She added the family will join Ovando in Guatemala once’s he is released from Stewart and has settled there. Because of a chronic illness, she said she cannot support the family by herself. She recently launched a GoFundMe appeal to raise funds.