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California accounts for 1 in 4 ICE arrests of Asian immigrants, new tracker finds
A protester walks past graffiti tagged on a wall across the street from the Metropolitan Detention Center in April.
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Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Los Angeles Times
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California saw the largest share of immigration arrests of people from Asian countries during the first 18 months of President Trump’s second term, a new tracker shows.
More than 25% of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took place in California, followed by Texas and New York.
The findings come from the new Asian and Pacific Islander ICE Tracker launched by Stop AAPI Hate.
These communities are often missing from the national debate over immigration enforcement, said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate during a briefing on the tracker.
“Asian and Pacific Islander communities deserve better than to be an afterthought in this crisis," Choi said. With the tracker, "we are aiming to ensure we cannot be ignored any longer."
The data shows that ICE actions targeting Asian immigrants rose much faster than enforcement against groups overall between January 2025 and August 2026.
Arrests were up 436% compared to a similar time period during the Biden administration; detentions up by 512%; deportations up by more than 1,100%.
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The number of arrests peaked this past July with 1,1950 recorded nationwide.
In California, there have been more than 5,300 arrests of Asian immigrants and more than 11,400 detention stints, which includes separate stays at different facilities during a single detention.
As for deportations, they were not broken down by state.
The largest numbers involved people from India and China, the countries of origin for the largest Asian immigrant populations in the U.S.
Stephanie Chan, Stop AAPI Hate’s director of data and research, noted that a rise in anti-Indian rhetoric centered on H1-B visa holders and truck drivers.
"You see a lot of elected officials saying things like, 'Indians are coming to take the jobs,'" Chan said.
Researchers also found that people from smaller communities — such as those from Laos and Uzbekistan — were arrested at rates far disproportionate to their share of the Asian noncitizen population.
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The tracker draws from ICE records obtained through public-records requests by the Deportation Data Project at UCLA and UC Berkeley.
Leaders at Stop AAPI Hate said the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is not only harming the people being swept up by ICE. Chan said the group’s annual survey of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders found more than half have felt the effects.
“That includes things like fearing that their status will be questioned,” Chan said. “That they will be arrested, detained, or deported.”
Choi drew parallels with how Asian Americans were scapegoated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who joined the briefing on the tracker, said the findings felt "very personal" because of the state’s large share of arrests.
A member of the Republican-led congressional China Committee focused on U.S. competition with the Chinese government, Khanna predicted Democrats would win the mid-terms and shift the tone of that panel.
"It's going to be much more about a celebration of Asian Americans — and documenting that — than the demonization of other countries," Khanna said.
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