‘It’s eye opening’: New Data Project Exposes Surge in Trump’s Immigration Raids

When Donald Trump promised a mass deportation blitz before the 2024 election, Graeme Blair and his colleagues knew they had to act. Blair, a UCLA political science professor, teamed up with UC Berkeley law professor David Hausman and attorney Amber Qureshi to launch the Deportation Data Project. Their mission: track and expose the sharp rise in immigration enforcement under Trump’s second term.

The numbers are brutal. Deportations more than quadrupled in the first nine months of Trump’s return to office compared to the end of Joe Biden’s presidency. In Los Angeles alone, ICE agents arrested an average of 1,264 people per day during December 2025 and January 2026 — a 300% increase from the year before. Most of those detained had no criminal record, shattering the myth that ICE only targets dangerous criminals.

The project scrapes public immigration court data and files Freedom of Information Act requests to piece together who is being arrested, detained, and deported — and where. But getting data from ICE is a battle. The agency often ignores FOIA requests, forcing the team to sue at least four times to get basic information. ICE declined to comment on the lawsuits.

This data isn’t just academic. It’s fueling legal challenges against ICE’s racially biased stops and raids. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have used the project’s findings in court to push back against ICE’s targeting of Latinos based on race and language. Although a lower court temporarily blocked these discriminatory stops, the Supreme Court recently allowed ICE to continue them, underscoring the uphill fight ahead.

The Deportation Data Project runs mostly on volunteer power, with funding from UCLA’s California Center for Population Research and a private donor. Despite the urgency, Blair says funding is scarce because few donors want to spotlight immigration enforcement abuses.

Students from UCLA and UC Berkeley play a crucial role, fact-checking and analyzing the data. For many, like political science student Rida Fatima, the project hits close to home. “It’s eye opening to see how big and close immigration enforcement is,” she says. “People live among us, and it’s a scary environment.”

The human cost extends beyond arrests. Local Latino-owned businesses in Los Angeles have lost nearly half their customers due to fear of ICE raids, deepening the damage to communities already under siege.

The Deportation Data Project is more than a data aggregator. It’s a frontline tool in the fight against Trump’s authoritarian immigration crackdown — shining a light on abuses, supporting legal resistance, and demanding accountability in a moment when silence equals complicity.