Why Should Delaware Care?
Federal immigration enforcement in Delaware has quietly ramped up in the first four months of the year, with criminal charges for unauthorized reentry skyrocketing in 2025. Despite receiving little attention, the escalation showcases the promises of deportation crackdowns on which President Donald Trump retook the White House.
Federal immigration enforcement in Delaware has quietly and drastically escalated in the first four months of the year, with federal prosecutors bringing forth more criminal deportation cases since January than in all of 2024.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware has criminally charged at least 29 people with re-entering the country without authorization after previously being deported thus far in 2025, according to a Spotlight Delaware analysis of unsealed court records.
Last year, the office only charged four people.
The dramatic uptick in enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Delaware comes amid the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s second administration, which was successful, in part, by campaigning on the promise of mass deportations and an immigration enforcement crackdown.
ICE booked nearly 43,000 people into detention during the first three months of the Trump administration, according to the nonpartisan data research nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Conversely, the agency booked just over 24,000 people into ICE detention in the last three months of the Biden administration, according to TRAC.
In late January, the Trump administration pressured ICE officials to increase arrests from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500, according to reporting from the Washington Post. The quotas came after Trump was reportedly disappointed with the outcome of the mass deportation promises he ran on.
That led to initiatives like a six-day operation in Florida where over 1,000 people were arrested — over 60% of whom had an arrest or a conviction, according to ICE and reporting from the New York Times. The operation was geared toward arresting people with deportation orders and criminal histories.
ICE deportation operations in the First State have mostly gone unnoticed during the first months of the Trump presidency, with little media attention and no confirmed mass raids.
All of the 29 cases charged in Delaware so far involve men who are currently incarcerated, have been criminally charged and, or, who have been previously deported but returned to the United States.
The escalation of criminal cases against suspected undocumented immigrants, however, indicate that enforcement has quietly ramped up. Illegal reentry cases now represent the bulk of charges filed by U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s office in the first three months of the Trump administration.
Delaware State Police notified ICE of at least two arrests
In March, Delaware State Police notified ICE agents about two separate arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants. In February, Gov. Matt Meyer promised that state police wouldn’t work with the agency in most situations.
The governor’s office said it would not use state law enforcement resources to carry out federal immigration policies “unless there is a valid court warrant and an exigent circumstance where the community is at risk,” Misty Seemans, deputy legal counsel with the governor’s office, said at the time.
In the March cases, both men had been arrested on criminal changes when their immigration status was checked. One man was arrested for drug dealing-related charges, while the other was arrested for stalking-related charges, according to court records.
When reached for comment, Meyer’s office referred Spotlight Delaware to the Delaware Department of Safety & Homeland Security and did not respond to emailed questions. ICE and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware did not respond to requests for comment.
India Sturgis, spokesperson for Delaware State Police, said that both cases involved felony-level criminal offenses and in such cases, where there is a potential threat to public safety, “communication with federal agencies may occur in accordance with applicable law,” Sturgis wrote in an email to Spotlight Delaware.
Delaware State Police does not proactively contact ICE or participate in immigration enforcement actions that are solely related to a person’s suspected immigration status, according to Sturgis.
She added that information may be shared with federal agencies, including ICE, in connection with criminal investigations or public safety concerns.
ICE arrests continue in recent days
On Wednesday, ICE agents with the Dover field office conducted a traffic stop on a Guatemalan man in Sussex County, ultimately arresting him and charging him with unauthorized reentry, court documents show.
The agents stopped the man, believing he was another person for whom they had an immigration warrant. The man provided agents with a Guatemalan ID card and was arrested after he couldn’t provide immigration documents.
The man was previously encountered by U.S. Border Patrol near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas in 2014. The man was deported to Guatemala four days after being picked up by Border Patrol agents.
On Thursday, federal agents in New Castle arrested a man from Mexico who had previously been deported three times in 2007, 2008 and 2009, according to court records. The man was charged in Delaware District Court with unauthorized reentry after being deported.
In total, 13 people were arrested for various separate charges, such as driving under the influence and probation violations, before ICE was notified of their arrest by the agency’s California-based Pacific Enforcement Response Center (PERC), according to court documents. PERC notifies ICE field offices nationwide about undocumented immigrants who are suspected, arrested or convicted of criminal activity, so the agency can arrest them.
All of the people who have been charged so far this year are from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador or the Dominican Republic.
In April, arrest warrants were issued for two men who were already in prison. One was facing pretrial detention, while the other was a sentenced prisoner at Sussex Correctional Institution.
ICE has made over 26,000 arrests thus far in fiscal year 2025, which runs from October through September, according to ICE data. Criminal charges against two more men were filed on Wednesday and Thursday.