Nearly 20,000 people have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement across Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia between Jan. 20, 2025 and March 10, 2026, a sweeping crackdown that has driven many immigrant families out of public view and set off new legal battles and political fights. Advocates and elected officials say the region is still dealing with the fallout.
According to The Washington Post, ICE detained roughly 19,500 people in those three jurisdictions during that period, and about 11,600 of them, roughly 60 percent, had no prior criminal record. The Post reported that those totals are a stark jump from the nearly 3,800 arrests recorded in the region during the last full year of the Biden administration. After a key court ruling in December, arrests inside the District dropped, while numbers in Maryland and Virginia stayed high or climbed.
Where the figures come from
The arrest figures come from federal enforcement records released through academic work and public-records requests, including the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley. The project has compiled anonymized, individual-level ICE and immigration court data that newsrooms and researchers use to check government claims about who is being targeted for arrest.
Judge limits warrantless arrests in D.C.
In early December, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the administration's practice of carrying out wide-ranging warrantless civil immigration arrests in the District was likely violating federal law and ordered stricter documentation and limits on such arrests. As reported by AP News, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell faulted immigration authorities for what she called a "systemic failure" to follow probable-cause and flight-risk standards. That decision coincided with a sharp drop in arrests inside the city, even as enforcement continued in surrounding suburbs and beyond.
Maryland and Virginia remain enforcement hotspots
Maryland's arrest numbers started climbing in September 2025 and, per The Washington Post, peaked in January 2026, when ICE took more than 800 people into custody in a single month. In Virginia, agents averaged nearly 700 arrests a month earlier in 2025, then topped 800 a month from September through early March 2026. "Honestly, I think the community is scared and rightfully so," Atenas Burrola Estrada of the Amica Center told The Post, describing arrests that frequently unfold during scheduled check-ins.
Policy context and leadership changes
The enforcement surge followed President Trump’s Aug. 11, 2025 declaration of a "crime emergency" in the capital and a broader push to prioritize immigration arrests, a shift covered by national outlets such as PBS. The administration also reworked its leadership team: DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was removed in March, and Senator Markwayne Mullin was later confirmed to lead DHS, changes that could shape how ICE carries out operations. Coverage of Noem's reassignment and Mullin's nomination and confirmation has appeared in outlets including NBC.
Local response and what to watch
Across the region, elected officials and county lawmakers are moving to scale back local cooperation with ICE and to require more openness around federal operations. In Montgomery County, for example, councilmembers introduced bills this year to curb ICE access to county property and tighten reporting rules, as reported in coverage of efforts to restrict ICE operations. Immigrant-rights groups say they plan to keep pressing their legal challenges while watching month-by-month arrest data to see whether the numbers fall or spike again.
What happens next will hinge on new federal datasets, future court decisions and whether the new DHS leadership shifts priorities in the field. Researchers and local advocates say they will keep combing through public records to track who is being arrested and under what circumstances.
