Weekly immigration arrests in Nevada hit a record high earlier this summer, according to a Nevada Independent analysis of federal immigration data, even as the Trump administration moves away from the militaristic, high-profile raids seen earlier this year in states such as Minnesota. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 203 people in Nevada across a two-week span from late June to early July, by far the most people arrested in a two-week period in Nevada on record. This period also saw a significant jump in the percent of people arrested with no criminal record.

One week in June also saw a record number of people arrested in the community, rather than while in custody.

The data confirms anecdotal reports from attorneys and advocates of increasing enforcement activity in Nevada and nationwide. Nevadans for the Common Good, a coalition of faith-based groups and nonprofits, told The Indy in June that seven of its members were detained by ICE during a two-week period that month, including three who were picked up during traffic stops.

The findings are part of the latest release from the Deportation Data Project, an initiative out of the University of California, Berkeley, that publishes data on ICE arrests and detentions accessed through public records requests. This release covers ICE arrest data from mid-March through early August.

While Nevada has so far avoided the large-scale deportation raids seen in states such as California and Minnesota, ICE has still maintained a steady presence in the state, which has one of the highest per capita undocumented populations nationwide, The Indy's prior analyses showed.

"They are looking to have as high numbers of arrests as possible, but with as low a public profile as they can," said Michael Kagan, director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic.

Nevada's arrest numbers still pale in comparison to some other states. In Texas, for example, daily arrests total nearly 400, which is more arrests than Nevada has seen in a single month.

But by Nevada's standards, the latest batch of data shows federal immigration enforcement has not relented.

April, June and July had the three highest number of arrests in Nevada, The Indy found. Arrests had been largely trending downward from July 2025 through February, but they took off again in the spring.

The spike in arrests this summer comes after ICE received more than $35 billion in June through an omnibus immigration package, which will fund the agency through the rest of Trump's presidency. There are subtle signs ICE is looking to expand in the Las Vegas area, such as its recent solicitation to lease parking spaces downtown under a notice labeled "surgeparking."

The agency is also on a hiring spree, with 29,000 employees in June, an increase of about 8,000 from the start of Trump's term, The New York Times reported last week. 

Increase in arrests of people with no criminal record

As has been the case through much of Trump's second term, the share of people arrested in Nevada with no criminal record has been steadily increasing.

In the five months covered in the latest data release, 18 percent of arrests were of people with no criminal charges. Under the rest of Trump's second term, that number was 12 percent. At the same time, the percent of people with criminal convictions fell slightly, while the percent with pending charges increased.

Still, these numbers differ significantly from the rest of the country. Under Trump's second term, about 39 percent of people arrested by ICE nationwide had no criminal record, while about 31 percent had previous criminal convictions. The Indy's analysis found.

Even among people with a criminal conviction, many are for nonviolent crimes.

In Nevada, about 8 percent of people's criminal convictions were for violent crimes. That means of the about 5,000 people arrested by ICE in Nevada this year, about 3 percent had a criminal conviction for a violent crime.

During more than two years of ICE arrests under President Joe Biden, there were higher rates of people with convictions for violent crimes.

Where are the arrests happening?

Although the most publicized ICE arrests happen in the open, the vast majority of arrests in Nevada happen when a person is in custody, such as at detention centers or local jails. Under the Trump administration, about 73 percent of ICE arrests happened when a person was already in custody, a slightly higher rate from the latter half of the Biden administration. 

However, the tides are slowly turning.

In the latest release of arrest data, more than 30 percent of arrests were "at-large," meaning they happened out in the community. This was about a 25 percent increase from the rest of the Trump administration.

During the week of June 22, 70 arrests happened "at-large," the highest number on record. That week also had the highest number of total arrests.

In contrast to the summer spike in ICE arrests in Nevada, immigration enforcement-related arrests by local law enforcement deputized by ICE were low.

The partnership program, known as 287(g), deputizes law enforcement to carry out immigration enforcement duties within their jails, allowing officers to execute ICE arrest warrants and hold people for longer so ICE can pick them up for long-term detention. Five agencies in Nevada already have partnerships through this program — most notably the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department —  and the Nevada Department of Corrections quietly joined the program in July, expanding its ability to coordinate with ICE on immigration arrests. 

However, the ICE data shows 24 people have been arrested through the 287(g) program under Trump, making up less than 0.5 percent of all arrests since he took office.

This pales in comparison to other states. Several states with leadership particularly friendly to Trump's immigration policies have seen more than 20 percent of their arrests come through these partnership programs. West Virginia leads the pack at more than 60 percent.

Nevada ranks 34th in share of arrests through the 287(g) program.