Latino Angelenos with no criminal record are being locked into the federal immigration system at dramatically higher rates after President Trump took office, according to a new Los Angeles study that advocates say is already breaking up families and scrambling legal defense work. The authors argue that the sheer volume and speed of the arrests, along with a spike in transfers and deportations, signal a fundamental shift in how interior immigration enforcement is playing out on the ground.
A report from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge finds that monthly detentions of Latinos with no criminal convictions rose roughly sixfold between February and September 2024 and the same months in 2025, moving from about 900 per month to roughly 6,000 per month, with a peak near 10,500 in September 2025. According to the brief, detainees are now being held longer, with median stays stretching from just a few days to more than 25 days, and are being shuttled between facilities more often. The study estimates that about 55% of noncriminal Latino detainees were transferred out of state. Nearly nine in ten ultimately ended up deported, while only a small share were released back into their communities.
Local immigration attorneys say those numbers track with what they are seeing in real time. Hector Quiroga of Quiroga Law Office told FOX 13 Seattle that he is watching a sharp uptick in noncriminal Latinos placed into ICE custody. The station reported that detentions of Latino men rose from about 3,500 in 2024 to more than 38,000 in 2025, while arrests of women climbed from roughly 2,500 to about 7,300. Quiroga adds that out-of-state transfers and fast-track deportation timelines are making it harder for lawyers to find their own clients and build a defense before people are removed.
Why transfers and fast removals strain legal defense
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations runs the federal civil immigration detention system and says detention is used to make sure people appear for immigration proceedings or removal, with custody decisions weighing public safety and flight risk. ICE points to detention standards and oversight requirements, but attorneys and researchers counter that frequent long-distance transfers and crowded facilities can make it far tougher for detained people to quickly reach a lawyer, gather documents, and meaningfully fight their cases.
What the report warns and what to watch
The UCLA brief warns that these detention patterns “signal a shift toward mass confinement,” raising alarms about due process, family separation, and the broader social fallout of rapid interior enforcement. The authors drew on individual-level ICE records compiled by the UC Berkeley Deportation Data Project and urged closer scrutiny of how long people are held, how often they are transferred, and how often they are actually released as enforcement ramps up.
For families, community groups, and legal advocates, the questions are immediate and practical: where someone is being held, how quickly removal moves forward, and whether detention capacity and transfers will keep climbing. The UCLA researchers and the local attorneys quoted in media coverage argue that those trends demand sustained public oversight and clearer pathways for lawyers to reach people in custody. For the full analysis, see the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.
