Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers in Texas and throughout the nation have more and more focused people who find themselves not already in legislation enforcement custody, in keeping with a Texas Tribune evaluation of federal knowledge.
In Houston, the place the killing of an immigrant by an ICE agent has garnered nationwide consideration, the month-to-month variety of ICE arrests outdoors of detention services has greater than quadrupled, whilst in-custody arrests are nonetheless extra widespread. The variety of arrests in public areas and houses jumped from a month-to-month common of 150 beneath former President Joe Biden to greater than 640 beneath the primary 13 months of the Trump administration. These made up practically a 3rd of all ICE arrests within the metropolis as of early March 2026, rising from 16% beneath Biden.
Statewide, the share of neighborhood arrests jumped from 14% to 36% of all arrests. In the meantime, the rise nationwide was smaller, rising from 34% to 43%.
This shift in technique from jail pickups to arrests in broad daylight can elevate dangers of violent altercations in public locations, an immigration professor and immigration lawyer warn.
That’s what occurred this week when ICE brokers fatally shot 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, they mentioned.
“The taking pictures of the gentleman in Houston is strictly the tragic consequence to the type of on-the-street encounter between ICE and residents of native communities that has grow to be more and more widespread — but in addition more and more violent,” mentioned César Cuauhtémoc García-Hernández, an immigration legislation professor at Ohio State College.
Salgadao Araujo, a father of three, was driving his van to work Tuesday morning when ICE brokers in unmarked black autos stopped them. A Mexican citizen who had lived in Houston for 35 years, he had no felony file. He was additionally not the goal immigration brokers have been searching for after they stopped his van, and his son mentioned he was additionally within the strategy of acquiring authorized residency.
An up to date overview of federal immigration knowledge via early March 2026 by the Tribune additionally discovered arrests of individuals with felony convictions in Houston fell from 61% beneath Biden to 39% beneath Trump.
Moreover, total arrests in Houston and Texas have elevated within the final 12 months. In February 2026, ICE made round 7,100 arrests, of which 1,660 have been in Houston. That’s a considerable enhance in arrests from February 2025, when ICE made practically 4,200 arrests, of which practically a 3rd have been in Houston.
The Tribune analyzed federal authorities knowledge obtained by the Deportation Knowledge Mission, a bunch of immigration attorneys and professors. The information is aggregated instantly from authorities immigration businesses via Freedom of Info Act requests, the group says.
The Division of Homeland Safety, in an announcement on Friday, disputes the mission’s knowledge.
“This knowledge is being cherry-picked by the Deportation Knowledge Mission to hawk a false narrative,” the division mentioned. “DHS nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or the evaluation of the mission and its outcomes. The underside line is that the Deportation Knowledge Mission isn’t correct.”
The native felony justice system has lengthy served as a simple spot for immigration brokers to search out and ship undocumented immigrants into ICE custody. However immigration and authorized consultants say federal officers have shifted their technique to sustain with the administration’s demand for hundreds of ICE arrests a day.
Specifically, immigrants are much less more likely to commit crimes in comparison with U.S. residents so García-Hernández mentioned ICE could also be operating right into a “mathematical limitation.”
“To satisfy the aggressive and traditionally unprecedented deportation guarantees that the Trump administration has made, ICE has to begin concentrating on people who find themselves not on the radar of the native police or incarcerated,” he mentioned.
And because the administration shifts to extra “non-custodial” ICE arrests — that are arrests of people that aren’t already in state or federal custody — Paúl Pirela, a Houston-based immigration lawyer, mentioned this tactic can result in extra harmful altercations.
“By doing the non-custodial arrest and doing these public raids in crowded areas, errors will occur and then you definately’re placing individuals at risk,” Pirela mentioned.
Pirela additionally mentioned they threat extra racial profiling.
“And the harmful half is that it might result in extra violence,” he added.
Salgado was fatally shot in Houston’s east finish, a predominantly Latino neighborhood. Pirela additionally mentioned ICE presence and ICE raids have been concentrated in Harris County’s different Latino neighborhoods, akin to north Houston and Humble, a city about 20 miles northeast of downtown Houston.
General, García-Hernández additionally attributed the sharp rise in non-custody arrests in Texas to the state’s main immigrant inhabitants, which he mentioned gives federal brokers extra targets for arrests.
Texas, house to the second-largest inhabitants of undocumented immigrants within the nation — with greater than 1.6 million of the estimated 13.7 million nationally — has grow to be a spotlight of Trump’s promise to hold out the most important mass deportation operation within the nation’s historical past.
And Harris County is estimated to have greater than 600,000 undocumented residents, inserting it second to Los Angeles County, in keeping with a 2025 report from Migration Coverage Institute.
“The actual fact there are massive migrant inhabitants facilities in Texas’s city facilities and that these are people who find themselves waking up each morning and leaving house to go to work implies that it’s a lot simpler to identify these people,” García-Hernández mentioned.
As well as, he mentioned, Republican leaders in Texas have lengthy welcomed ICE brokers to the state by lowering obstacles of immigration enforcement operations.
Most not too long ago, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened to withdraw funding from Houston and two different main cities earlier this 12 months over insurance policies that he mentioned restricted police cooperation with ICE. Civil rights teams mentioned Houston then gutted its ordinance — which directed native officers to not extend site visitors stops and different encounters to provide federal brokers time to reply to suspected undocumented people — to maintain $114 million in public security grants.
This text first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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