Arrests by or on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Missouri more than doubled during the first seven months this year, while the share of those arrested who have no criminal convictions continued to rise.
Former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Paul Wagman detailed these findings and others in the latest issue of the Gateway Journalism Review. Citing newly released immigration enforcement data, Wagman noted that immigration arrests in Missouri have grown faster than the national rate over the past year and a half.
ICE arrests that led to detention rose from 1,179 during the first seven months of 2025 to 2,620 during the same period this year.
Additionally, the share of those arrested who had no criminal convictions continued to climb. It rose from 38.7% in 2024 to 62.3% last year and 70.6% during the first seven months of this year. Wagman noted that the rates are consistent with national rates.
The primary source of the data was UC Berkeley and UCLA’s Deportation Data Project, which gathers, analyzes and posts U.S. government immigration enforcement records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
In June and July, people with no criminal convictions and no pending criminal charges — those Wagman described as “accused solely of immigration violations” — made up the largest single category of those arrested and detained in Missouri, at 43.3%. Another 29.6% had pending criminal charges and 27% had criminal convictions.
ICE disputed the validity of the data.
“DHS [Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part] nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or the analysis of the project and its results. The bottom line is that the Deportation Data Project is not accurate,” ICE said.
ICE also said nearly 70% of people it arrests nationally have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
Wagman followed with more data, noting that ICE arrests leading to detention nearly quadrupled from 2024 to 2025 and have continued to rise.
“This past July alone…the number of those arrested in Missouri soared to nearly 500, a record and 24 percent higher than the previous record, set just the month before,” Wagman wrote.
Wagman noted that although Missouri has one of the lowest concentrations of Hispanics in the country, about 5.2%, Hispanics have been the group most targeted by ICE.
More aggressive enforcement is evident in the state’s biggest metropolitan areas — St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield.
Arrests in St. Louis more than tripled during the first seven months of this year, to 395 from 127 during the same period last year. Wagman noted that the data use both “St. Louis” and “Saint Louis,” with both appearing to include arrests in the city and county.
The increase also can be seen at ICE’s St. Louis Hold Room at 1222 Spruce St. in Downtown, where people arrested in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois are routinely booked into the immigration system. Through late July or early August, 1,375 people had been booked there — nearly 50% more than during the comparable period last year and up from just 11 during the same period in 2024.
In St. Charles, arrests nearly tripled to 97. Combined arrests in Kansas City and Independence rose 67% to 343, while arrests in Springfield more than doubled from 243 to 514.
More than 130 state and local law enforcement agencies in Missouri have some sort of agreement with ICE, according to Wagman. The Missouri State Highway Patrol entered into the state’s first 287(g) program last year. The Missouri National Guard separately provides administrative and clerical support for ICE operations in the state.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and St. Louis County Police Department, however, have not participated in the 287(g) program.
The federal government’s 287(g) program allows state and local law enforcement agencies to perform designated immigration enforcement functions. Local participants include St. Charles County police and sheriff’s departments in Ste. Genevieve, Jefferson, Franklin and Washington counties, along with police departments in Hillsdale, Breckenridge Hills, Ellisville, St. Ann, St. John, Woodson Terrace and Country Club Hills.
Arrest numbers reflect a surge in agreements between ICE and local law enforcement agencies, Wagman writes. There were 95 arrests under the program statewide in 2025. During the first seven months this year, there were 536 — about 20% of all arrests.
Much of the immigration enforcement activity in the St. Louis area and eastern Missouri also has been tracked by the Ashrei Foundation, a St. Louis-based, social justice-oriented nonprofit. The organization maintains a dashboard with data on ICE arrests and related information gathered through its STL Rapid Response Hotline.
Because Missouri does not have a dedicated federal immigration detention center, ICE contracts for beds at county facilities, including the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center, Greene County Jail in Springfield, Phelps County Jail in Rolla and Ozark County Jail in Gainesville.
Last year, The Marshall Project reported that cash-strapped rural Missouri jails were experiencing a windfall from the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.
ICE planned to spend “$45 billion on new contracts to hold and transport detainees and provide detainee services,” The Marshall Project reported, adding that counties such as Ozark were getting a taste of what the federal expansion could mean.
Data from the Deportation Data Project illustrate a sharp increase in deportations.
In 2024, 488 people arrested in Missouri were deported. The number increased to 1,979 last year and reached 2,219 through July this year — almost three times as many as during the same period a year ago.
Some detainees are flown directly out of the country from Kansas City International Airport. Others are bused to St. Louis and “flown from Lambert International Airport to Alexandria, La., the site of the nation’s primary deportation airport,” Wagman wrote.
The data also show that some immigrants have been deported to countries other than their native land — 45 last year and 32 during the first seven months of this year.
Those arrested are mostly working-age men, according to the Deportation Data Project. Women constituted 9% of those booked in Missouri last year and a little more than 11% so far this year.
Twenty-one people age 18 and younger have been arrested this year, compared with 49 last year. Among people 60 and older, 34 have been arrested this year, compared with 31 last year and 13 in 2024.
On its website, the Ashrei Foundation addresses what it describes as “systemic injustices” related to “anti-immigration” policies.
“The racist, anti-immigrant culture that shapes both federal and state government do not match the shared values and vision we have for our community,” the organization states.
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.