An ICE agent makes an arrest following a recent traffic stop. Photo provided by ICE
An ICE agent makes an arrest following a recent traffic stop. Photo provided by ICE
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An Indiana immigrant two years ago was criminally charged after his mother called police during a family dispute. The charges were dropped and the man was never convicted.

Still, the arrest put him on the radar of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to Indiana immigration attorney Christie Popp, who is representing the man.

In April, ICE agents came to his house in Bloomington and arrested him due in part to the phone call his mother made. He now faces deportation, Popp explained, but has since been released on bond after a judge found that he wasn’t a danger or flight risk.

Nearly 100 people from neighboring counties and beyond showed up to speak out against the move.

“The charges were dropped, and ICE still came to get him,” she said. “I think the family was shocked, because they thought that they could trust law enforcement for help, not realizing that it would send a family member away.”

A story in numbers

The arrest of immigrants with no criminal record, like Popp’s client, has spiked across Indiana as more local and state law enforcement agencies partner with ICE to implement President Donald Trump’s vision to mass deport undocumented immigrants.

In total, the number of immigrant arrests in Indiana from January to July this year (1,830) has jumped nearly 84% compared to the same time last year (996), according to ICE data provided to the Deportation Data Project, which advocates for enforcement transparency.

Of all the immigrant arrests this year, 41% had a criminal history. Nearly 60% have no criminal convictions. That includes 778 with pending criminal charges and 305 facing civil immigration violations. At the same time, more than 55% of immigrants being held in Indiana this year on an ICE detainer were considered to pose a low threat level, or no threat at all. Just under 22% held on detainer had a felony conviction.

An ICE detainer is a request for a county jail to hold an immigrant 48 hours beyond when they otherwise would be released so federal agents can make an arrest.

The arrest data conflicts with Trump’s assertion that his administration would focus first on deporting “the worst of the worst” to protect law-abiding citizens from the violent threats he says they pose.

Sarah Burrow, an Indianapolis-based immigration attorney, said ICE did focus on detaining immigrants with more serious criminal convictions in the first few months after Trump took office on Jan. 20.

A case in point: The enforcement agency in August touted immigration raids around Bloomington and Evansville in April and May in which 23 people were arrested, including 18 who had prior criminal arrests or convictions. ICE didn’t provide a breakdown on how many had convictions versus pending charges. “ICE officers are integral in keeping communities across our country safe from those who would commit violent, criminal acts,” said Douglas Thompson, assistant director of ICE’s Chicago enforcement division, in a release following the raids.

But the agency is now mostly targeting undocumented immigrants who have no criminal history or face minor traffic violations or misdemeanor charges, according to Burrow.

“Very quickly, at lightning speed, they’ve expanded their targets to include anyone at all who’s an immigrant,” she said.

ICE just getting started

Arrests are only set to increase across the state as more law enforcement agencies sign up to take on immigration enforcement powers.

Twelve Indiana agencies now have that authority after applying for ICE’s 287(g) program. The policy was created in 1996 to allow state and local law enforcement officers to perform certain immigration officer functions under the agency’s direction.

Eight of those were approved in just the last two months, including the Indiana State Police and the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. Those agencies can now carry out immigration enforcement during their regular policing duties. Five other local agencies also have that power.

Popp, the immigration attorney, said some officers are already using that authority to target Latinos, including initiating traffic stops for minor offenses just to check a driver’s immigration status.

“That is happening in Indiana,” she said. “We see all kinds of crazy reasons for stopping someone who’s brown.”

The Indiana Department of Correction and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department have been granted authority to make immigration arrests only at jails or prisons. Other agencies, including the IDOC, can now also serve federal ICE warrants for civil immigration violations.

Although the 287(g) program has existed for nearly two decades, no Indiana agencies last year had signed up. Nationally, only around 130 local and state agencies participated in 2024. That number now sits at over 1,000.

At the same time, ICE is set for a massive infusion of federal dollars to fund what will become the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.

In October, immigrant-enforcement agencies will receive their first allocation from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which provides $170 billion over four years. Most of that money will go to ICE to arrest, detain and deport immigrants, tripling the agency’s enforcement budget this year compared to 2024.

In preparation, Indiana has signed ICE contracts that will install two large-scale detention centers that in total will hold up to around 2,000 detainees. The facilities will be at the Miami Correctional Facility and at the Indiana National Guard’s Camp Atterbury.

Popp said the rapid buildup in Indiana of heavily funded immigration-enforcement officers will likely lead to indiscriminate arrests based on racial profiling that don’t target those with serious criminal records.

“I can’t even imagine where this is going,” she said. “I think it’s going to get 10 times worse starting Oct. 1.”

‘The government isn’t playing fair’

As more immigrants face arrest and deportation, a barrage of court rulings and policy changes by the Trump administration are fundamentally changing immigration laws and removing constitutionally protected due process, according to immigration attorneys.

Undocumented immigrants fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in the U.S. are no longer guaranteed a court hearing after the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled a judge can dismiss a case if their application is found to be insufficient.

That reverses decades of precedent in which filing an asylum application was simply the preliminary step to initiate a hearing for an immigrant to make their case in front of a judge. Another board ruling on Sept. 5 stripped immigration judges of their authority to grant bond to those who enter the U.S. unlawfully. That means individuals with no criminal record will be held in detention, sometimes for years, while their civil immigration case plays out.

Burrow said she receives numerous calls from those held in ICE detention who say they want to forfeit their case and voluntarily self-deport, but can’t due to delays in the agency procuring the right paperwork. Instead, they languish in detention at the cost of taxpayers, she explained.

“People are begging me to help them get out of the country,” Burrow said. “They are sitting in detention saying, ‘I want to go home,’ and they just sit day after day after day.”

Undocumented immigrants from Indiana showing up for asylum hearings have also been blindsided by an arrest after the Trump administration expanded the use of expedited removals to any non-citizen living in the U.S. for less than two years.

Expedited removals allows judges to deport people, sometimes in a single day, without an immigration court hearing or appearance before a judge. The process previously only applied to those apprehended within two weeks of their arrival in the U.S. and within 100 miles of a U.S. land border.

A federal judge in August blocked Trump’s fast-track deportation policy, but the damage has already been done for immigrants in Indiana who were deported without a hearing or due process, argued Popp. Burrow said she witnessed on multiple occasions ICE detaining non-citizens at immigration court after a judge granted the agency’s request to dismiss their asylum case, allowing for their arrest under expedited removal.

“They’re tossing expedited removals out like Oprah hands out cars,” she said. “It’s nuts.”

In response, the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance has organized court watches at the Indianapolis Immigration Court, which opened in January. Volunteers sit in on hearings to observe the proceedings, take notes and collect data on the cases.

Aaron Spiegel, director of the nonprofit group, explained volunteers already attend eviction hearings. Following the whirlwind of immigration policy changes, members felt compelled to provide a similar presence in immigration court, he said, where they’re often the only witness in the room.

“We discovered in eviction court that presence matters,” Speigel said. “We’ve seen all the judges change their behavior, and we’re seeing that now in immigration court, too.”

Even so, immigrants’ ability to make their case in good faith before a judge is purposefully being eroded, argued Popp, noting the Trump administration has implemented 400 immigration policy changes just this year.

With a near-daily barrage of new policies, undocumented immigrants in Indiana have little chance at a fair trial, she said. That will only get worse as ICE continues to ramp up arrests and flood already-overburdened immigration courts with more cases, Popp asserted.

“The government is not playing fair,” she said. “They keep changing the rules on us and in many cases have violated the civil, human and constitutional rights of immigrants.”
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