ICE agents are seizing more people from jails in the Austin area, county officials tell The Texas Newsroom, sometimes visiting the facilities multiple times per day as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement nationwide.
“For inmates in our care and custody, they usually wait 24 hours or less because we get pickups from [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] almost every day,” Kristen Dark, Public Information Officer of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, said in an interview this month.
She added: “Sometimes they do pick up from us twice a day.”
Aggressive immigration sweeps and arrests have become a hallmark of Trump-era immigration policy. Cities in blue states like California and Illinois have seen the most public crackdowns, including the deployment of federal troops. But, in Texas, where local leaders are compelled to hand people arrested on other charges over ICE directly from county jails, many immigration arrests remain hidden from public view.
The Texas Newsroom filed records requests and spoke to immigrants’ advocates and law enforcement officials to get a clearer picture of how immigration enforcement has changed here under Donald Trump’s second term.
The findings reveal that a growing number of people in Travis County find themselves facing deportation after sometimes routine run-ins with the police.
The jump in the number of people in the county jail identified for ICE arrest coincides with similar increases in other Texas counties, according to data from the Deportation Data Project.
Dark says the local increase can largely be attributed to a growing jail population. Others point to Trump administration policies that have swept a growing number of people into ICE custody and deportation proceedings.
Some local law enforcement officials, like Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez, worry the current administration’s aggressive policies could further interfere with their efforts to build healthier connections with immigrant communities. Hernandez is one of several law enforcement officials in Texas who have been reluctant to cooperate with federal immigration agents.
Despite these concerns, even more people will likely face deportation after entering the jail system under a new state law taking effect next year.
“Hernandez always says, we want people to run to us, not away from us,” Dark said. “If someone is a victim of crime, we don't want them to be afraid to talk to us. We want to hear from them.”
The state’s top Republican politicians, like Gov. Greg Abbott, have voiced strong support for policies that compel local officials to enforce federal immigration rules.
"Texas finally has a partner in the White House,” Andrew Mahaleris, Press Secretary for Abbott wrote in response to a request for comment. “Governor Abbott fully supports the Trump Administration’s efforts to deport those who intentionally broke our laws and entered our country illegally."
Civil rights advocates point out that ICE is, increasingly, detaining people who are in the county legally or are pursuing a path to legal residency.
ICE detainers go up
In Texas, jails will hold someone for an additional 48 hours if a background check reveals the person may be in the country without legal status. This “immigration hold,” which is also called an “ICE detainer,” gives federal agents more time to take them into custody.
People can be arrested and sent to county lockup for reasons as innocuous as driving without a license to far more serious allegations like assault. Until final conviction, they are presumed innocent.
Immigration attorney Iris Albizu believes part of the increase in immigration arrests from county jail is because ICE is detaining more people who are in the process of applying for legal residency.
“What is shocking is that people that are already in the system, people that already have a protected status [...] those people are being detained,” Albizu said.
In response to an open records request, the Travis County Sheriff's office provided The Texas Newsroom with snapshots of the number of people in county jails on the first day of each month for the past several years.
Six out of the nine months this year showed higher numbers of people with ICE detainers as compared to this same period last year. It was the highest in May, when 343 people in Travis County jails were flagged for pickup by ICE. That month, people with ICE detainers accounted for nearly 15% of the local jail population.
But monthly point-in-time numbers only tell part of the story, as some people may be moved from the jail and then to ICE detention before they are counted, and others may stay in jail for months appearing in multiple counts.
Analysts said a better metric is to measure the growth in ICE detainers issued to people booked into jail.
ICE data compiled by the Deportation Data Project, a project run by UCLA and UC Berkeley, shows the number of detainers issued to people booked into local jails was 40% higher in the first six months of this year than during that same period last year.
“It's clear that the Trump administration's priorities around increasing immigration enforcement and mass deportation — they are doing that in Travis County,” said Jacob Kang-Brown, a researcher who studies the use of county jails in immigration enforcement at the Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank that advocates against mass incarceration.
This uptick cannot be fully explained by an increase in the local jail population. While overcrowding has been an issue in Travis County jails, the rise in detainers issues appears to have outpaced jail population growth.
“Texas has one of the highest rates of ICE arrests, and that's really being driven by the arrests that are happening in the local jails,” Kang-Brown added.
The Texas Newsroom has asked for more detailed data on ICE detainers to provide a fuller picture of local enforcement patterns.
Travis County v. ICE
Local law enforcement officials in the Austin area have often been at odds with Republican state and federal political leadership over the role local law enforcement should play in immigration enforcement.
Hernandez unsuccessfully fought a 2017 law that mandated that counties hold all inmates flagged with ICE detainers for pickup. Since then, she has complied with the mandate.
But, unlike some other counties, Travis has not partnered with federal or state agencies to enforce immigration policy beyond the detainer system. This affects communication between the agencies, which is already limited.
Dark said neither ICE nor the Texas Department of Public Safety have notified the Travis County Sheriff’s ahead of time when they conduct immigration sweeps or raids.
ICE did not reply to an emailed list of questions from The Texas Newsroom.
But under a new state law passed this year, coordination between ICE and local sheriff’s departments will expand despite this reticence.
The new law, which will go into full effect by the end of next year, will require departments to choose from three different options for how to form deeper partnerships with federal immigration agents.
One will allow counties to create their own immigration task forces, empowered to check people's citizenship status while out on patrol. Other options are less expansive, like training sheriff’s deputies to run their own immigration checks from county jails.
"We're looking at all of the models very, very carefully. And we'll be considering the cost and the impact of each before we make our decision," said Dark.
No matter what model counties chose, immigrants advocates say the law is sure to increase the already growing number of people who find themselves facing deportation after being detained by local authorities for unrelated reasons.
“That person may be innocent of whatever they’re charged with,” said immigration attorney Iris Albizu, “But, because now they’re caught by immigration, they’re trapped.”
Counties must decide which option they will take by the end of 2026.
