DHS Is Now Arresting 1,500 Illegal Aliens a Day. One Weekend’s Haul Included a Homicide Conviction, Three Child Rape Convictions, and Two Kidnappings.
On August 3, Breitbart published two stories a few hours apart. The first said the Department of Homeland Security is now arresting an average of 1,500 illegal aliens a day, the fastest pace of the Trump administration’s second term. The second named exactly who Immigration and Customs Enforcement had just taken off the street that weekend: a homicide conviction out of Nevada, three convictions for sexually assaulting a child, a rape conviction, two kidnapping convictions, and eight more.
The two stories are the same story at two different resolutions. One is the scale of the operation. The other is who, specifically, is inside it.
Neither number came from a press conference DHS scheduled to brag. The 1,500-a-day figure surfaced in internal documents obtained by CBS News that the department had not yet released. The criminal roster came from a routine Sunday-night bulletin DHS calls “Worst of the Worst” — the format the department now uses roughly twice a week to argue that the crackdown should be judged by the names on the list, not the politics around it.
- 1,500/day average daily ICE bookings in July 2026, the second straight monthly record — CBS News, internal DHS documents
- 46,000+ total ICE detentions logged in July, up from 43,000 in June — CBS News
- $76,500,000,000 in five-year ICE funding from the 2025 reconciliation law that financed the hiring surge behind the numbers — Police1, citing DHS
The figure Breitbart led with comes from CBS News reporting on internal DHS documents the department had not made public. An average of 1,500 detainees entered ICE custody each day in July, though some were first picked up by Customs and Border Protection agents at the border rather than by ICE itself in the interior. That produced more than 46,000 book-ins for the month, beating June’s 43,000 — itself a record at the time. The Washington Examiner separately clocked the daily rate at 1,474 for the first eleven days of July, and Fox News cited federal sources putting the full month closer to 51,000 arrests, or roughly 1,645 a day. The counts differ by methodology; the direction does not. Both months set records, back to back.
The pace had not climbed in a straight line. CBS reported that arrests dipped earlier this year after two fatal ICE shootings in the Minneapolis area — Renee Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti weeks later — drew bipartisan criticism and slowed operations. July’s numbers are the rebound. “We’re turning up the heat on the streets,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told CBS News. “We’re out there working harder than we’ve ever had because we’ve empowered our law enforcement to do their job.”
Since day one, @ICEgov has been delivering on President Trump's promise to make America safe again. Recent ICE arrests include gang members, attempted murderers, pedophiles, stalkers, and drug traffickers. These are the thugs we are getting out of American communities.
The scale number tells you how many. The list DHS published two days later tells you who. On August 3, the department’s “Worst of the Worst” release named 15 people ICE had taken into custody that weekend, each with a country of origin, a specific conviction, and the county or federal district where they were convicted.
Juan Mauricio Castillo, from El Salvador, was convicted of homicide by willful killing in Washoe County, Nevada. Juan Escobar-Herrera, from Honduras, was convicted of sexually assaulting a child under 12 in Opelika, Alabama. Aung Lwin, from Burma, and Bruno Efren Santos-Gonzalez, from Ecuador, each carried convictions for sexual offenses against a child, out of Omaha, Nebraska, and Los Angeles, California. Antonio De Jesus Andrade-Ochoa, from Mexico, was convicted of second-degree rape in Georgetown, Delaware. Joel Olivio-Baez, from the Dominican Republic, and Christian Maximo Castaneda-Negrete, from Peru, each carried kidnapping convictions, out of Newark, New Jersey, and Devens, Massachusetts.
15 criminal illegal aliens named, from 9 different countries
1 homicide conviction
3 convictions for sexual offenses against a child
1 additional rape conviction
2 kidnapping convictions
The remaining eight carried convictions for robbery, aggravated battery, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug distribution, including two federal cocaine cases out of Texas and Florida.
“While Americans were enjoying their weekend, ICE law enforcement was arresting murderers, pedophiles, rapists, kidnappers, and other criminal illegal aliens across the country.”
DHS spokesperson · 'Worst of the Worst' release · August 3, 2026
It was one of roughly two dozen “Worst of the Worst” bulletins DHS has published since June alone — a messaging campaign built on the theory that specific names and specific convictions land harder with readers than an aggregate arrest total ever could.
The surge has outlasted the people who were supposed to run it. Kristi Noem (R), DHS secretary for the first year of Trump’s second term, was replaced in March; the Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a former U.S. senator, as her successor on a 54-45 vote. ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, announced in April that he would step down at the end of May; David Venturella, a former GEO Group executive who had overseen ICE’s detention contracts, took over June 1.
None of that turnover slowed the arrest pace — if anything, it accelerated once the money caught up. The 2025 reconciliation law gave ICE $76,500,000,000 over five years, funding a hiring campaign that took the agency from roughly 10,000 officers to 22,000 in under a year — a 120% increase — with signing bonuses of up to $50,000. “This is a 120% increase in our workforce, and that’s in just about four months,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said of the ramp-up. More agents on the street is the mechanical explanation for more arrests on the board.
The publicity strategy has a single author. In January, after protesters disrupted a Minneapolis-area church service chanting the name of a woman killed in an ICE shooting, Trump posted on Truth Social that DHS “must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing,” adding that the agency should “show the numbers, names, and faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW.” The “Worst of the Worst” series is that instruction, executed roughly twice a week since.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing and taking out of the system. Show the numbers, names, and faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW.
Posted after protesters disrupted a St. Paul church service; the post is the origin of DHS's 'Worst of the Worst' release format
Trump has also overruled his own department when its instincts ran the other way. In mid-July, after two fatal ICE shootings in a week — one in Houston, one in Maine — DHS quietly told agents to pull back on vehicle stops. Trump reversed it within days. “It won’t happen on my watch,” he wrote, adding that ICE “CANNOT give up one of its most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP.”
I.C.E. CANNOT give up one of its most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen on my watch.
Posted after DHS briefly paused vehicle stops following fatal shootings in Houston and Maine; Trump reversed the pause within days
DHS’s own message is that the arrests are concentrated on people who deserve it. “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged with or convicted of a crime in the United States,” the department posted alongside the August 3 list. That figure is real, but it answers a narrower question than it sounds like it does — “charged with or convicted of a crime” covers everything from homicide down to a traffic offense or an immigration paperwork violation.
A separate internal DHS document, also obtained by CBS News and covering the administration’s first full year, put a finer point on it: of roughly 393,000 arrests between January 2025 and January 2026, nearly 60% carried some criminal history, but only 13.9% — fewer than one in seven — had a charge or conviction specifically for a violent offense, defined as homicide, robbery, sexual assault, assault, kidnapping, or arson. A DHS spokesperson disputed that framing, telling CBS that offenses including “distribution of child pornography, burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor, human smuggling” were being counted as nonviolent under that methodology — a fair objection to the label, if not to the underlying count.
Under @POTUS Trump and @SecMullinDHS, @ICEgov is going after the WORST OF THE WORST. Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the United States. Every day, the men and women of ICE are making America safe again by removing sex criminals,
Our duty is to the Constitution. We enforce the laws enacted by Congress and we keep ALL American communities safe.
Both numbers are true at once. The 1,500-a-day pace is real, and the August 3 list of a homicide, three child-sex convictions, and two kidnappings is real. So is the fact that, across the full first-year dataset, roughly six of every seven people ICE has arrested did not carry a violent-crime record — the statistic DHS’s own “Worst of the Worst” campaign is built, release by release, to keep out of the frame.
DHS is arresting more people than at any point in the Trump administration’s second term — an average of 1,500 a day in July, the second record month running, funded by a $76,500,000,000 hiring surge that doubled ICE’s workforce. Some of those arrests are exactly what the department’s Sunday-night releases advertise: a homicide conviction, three child-sex-assault convictions, and two kidnapping convictions, all taken off American streets in a single weekend. By the administration’s own internal accounting, cases like those are the minority, not the median, of who ends up in ICE custody. Both facts are documented. Neither cancels the other out.
