Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 49,571 people in July, the highest monthly total since President Trump returned to the White House, according to federal data reviewed by NPR and independently confirmed by CBS News. The tally averages out to roughly 1,600 arrests every day of the month, marking a 15% jump from June's 43,021 arrests and a 70% surge over the 29,241 people picked up in February.

Where the numbers are coming from

More than half of July's arrests were concentrated in four states — Texas, Florida, California and Georgia — according to the Deportation Data Project, a UCLA effort that tracks ICE activity through public-records requests. Florida stands out: all 67 of its counties have now signed 287(g) agreements deputizing local police to make immigration arrests, a model the administration has leaned on heavily. Nationwide, state and local law enforcement accounted for roughly 6,500 of July's arrests — 13% of the total, up from under 5% a year ago — with agents increasingly pulling people over during routine traffic stops rather than waiting to detain those already in local custody.

"What we're seeing is an expansion in all of the different ways that ICE is detaining people," said Graeme Blair, co-director of the Deportation Data Project. "They're arresting people at airports, at ICE check-ins, at immigration courthouses."

The surge follows a hiring push funded by this year's congressional budget package and comes as roughly 300,000 Haitian immigrants lost Temporary Protected Status, adding a fresh pool of people newly exposed to arrest. It also follows fatal shootings by ICE agents during traffic stops in Texas and Maine that drew local outcry, according to reporting from The Hill — incidents that came after Trump personally intervened to kill a proposed 24-hour moratorium on vehicle stops that had been floated inside the agency.

"We're out there working harder than we've ever had because we've empowered our law enforcement," said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

DHS cast the figures as proof the crackdown is working, saying "the brave men and women of ICE are arresting and deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens, including gang members, from our country" and crediting Trump and Mullin with putting "the safety of the American people" first. The department separately claims more than 3 million people have left the country since Trump's return to office — including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations — with over 985,000 formally deported and more than 1 million arrested as of mid-July.

Mullin, a former Oklahoma senator confirmed as DHS secretary in March, has taken a notably quieter approach than predecessor Kristi Noem, favoring steady volume over the high-profile televised raids that defined the department's earlier messaging.

With ICE's hiring surge still ramping up and enforcement funding far from exhausted, officials and advocates alike expect monthly totals to keep climbing into the fall — even as wrongful-detention lawsuits and fallout from the traffic-stop shootings continue working through the courts.