After ICE operations ended in bloodshed last year, the administration tried something new: do it quietly, with no cameras and no fanfare.

"If you come to our country illegally, we will find you, we will arrest you and we will deport you."

— DHS Spokeswoman Lauren Bis

The White House secretly ordered a surge in immigration arrests in early July, and within five days, federal agents had detained more than 10,000 people. According to internal documents obtained by the New York Times and conversations with federal officials, Trump's team set a new benchmark of 2,000 detentions per day. Daily arrest numbers roughly doubled from the approximately 1,000 picked up each day earlier in the year.

This is not the same operation that ended in bloodshed last year. The 2025 campaigns were announced in advance, defined by masked officers flooding Democratic-run cities. The so-called "commander-at-large" Gregory Bovino racked up more than 5,000 arrests in Los Angeles and over 3,000 in Chicago. It all collapsed in Minneapolis, where Border Patrol and ICE agents shot at least 14 people between September 2025 and February 2026, including two American citizens: Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, and Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse.

Translation: the administration learned from its mistakes, not by stopping, but by going underground.

The current push has no press conferences, no marching columns of officers, no "commander-at-large" posing with agents. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who replaced Kristi Noem after the Minneapolis deaths, promised a "different approach that can be more effective and less public-facing." Agents are seizing people at routine immigration check-ins, during traffic stops, and out on the street. Detentions peaked on Saturday at more than 2,400 in a single day.

The detained population inside ICE facilities has jumped by nearly 4,000, to more than 63,000 as of last week.

On the ground, immigration lawyers report the same pattern across the country. In Utah, attorney Ysabel Lonazco said one client, a man who had overstayed his visa, was picked up while driving over the weekend. "People don't want to leave their houses," she said. "They are afraid to drive to do their grocery shopping."

In South Texas, Nigerian nun Sister Letty Ugboaja was arrested on her way to church on Sunday morning. She was released the same day after congressional officials intervened. Her colleague, Sister Norma Pimentel, told the Times: "It took her a while to be able to talk. She was crying."

The timing deserves attention. The arrest surge came days after the Supreme Court handed Trump a mixed result on immigration: it expanded his power over policy by allowing the removal of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, while simultaneously blocking his bid to end birthright citizenship. With one door wider open and another firmly shut, the administration pushed through the open one as fast as possible.

Haitian and Syrian communities are scrambling to secure alternative protected status before ICE arrives. Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Support Center, told Daily Kos: "Now we are vulnerable, we are exposed to detention and to deportation. I think now the type of life they have here just goes away because of the ruling of the Supreme Court."

Meanwhile, Venezuelans who recently lost TPS are dealing with a twin tragedy. Twin earthquakes struck Venezuela last week, toppling buildings and killing at least 2,295 people. Nearly 50,000 are unaccounted for. While Venezuelans across the United States packed boxes of diapers, tampons, and canned food for their devastated homeland, ICE was already targeting members of the same community here.

The White House's decision to double down on arrests comes despite the fact that the deportation campaign is deeply unpopular. Polls show record opposition to ICE. Republicans have reportedly been urged to drop the phrase "mass deportation" entirely. Even within the administration, the strategy has been under pressure: Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's stated goal of 3,000 detentions daily has never been hit. Arrests had slumped to as low as 1,200 per day, which infuriated the MAGA base.

The perceived slowdown is what prompted Trump to secretly order the new surge behind the scenes.

The administration's quiet enforcement comes as the world watches the United States for the soccer World Cup and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will be no grandstanding. No photos of rows of cages. Just federal agents working seven-day weeks, hitting traffic stops and check-in appointments, filling detention facilities that are already at capacity.

The question isn't whether this approach will work better than the last one. The question is what it means when the government's preferred tool for governing is to quietly take people off the street and lock them up until nobody notices.