ICE Arrests of Asian Americans in California Surge Over 1,000% Under Trump Administration

Immigration arrests of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in California increased more than tenfold in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new analysis by the USC Equity Research Institute.

The analysis found that AAPI Californians were involved in one of every 10 arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025. That represented a 1,109% increase from the prior year and was significantly higher than the 386% jump in overall ICE arrests statewide.

Fresno has felt this shift directly. The city is home to the second-largest concentration of Hmong people nationwide, many descendants of U.S. allies during the Vietnam War. Fresno also has large South and Southeast Asian communities from India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

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“These communities are being impacted in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Tilman Jacobs, an immigrants rights supervising attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, the nation’s oldest Asian American civil rights advocacy group, told The Bee last fall.

Southeast Asian Fresno residents have been detained at ICE check-ins, where these individuals previously had regular ICE check-ins in lieu of deportations, advocates and an immigration lawyer told The Bee in October.

A separate analysis of federal deportation data found that in the first six months of the Trump administration, India and Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam were among the highest represented in deportations from the central San Joaquin Valley region.

The Breakdown

• The AAPI communities that experienced the largest increases in ICE arrests were from India, China, Vietnam, Armenia and Laos.
• About 56% of AAPI Californians arrested by ICE had no criminal record.
• The Trump administration has pressured Laos to accept deported individuals — including people who were not born in the country and whose parents fled — by threatening to withhold business and tourist visas to Lao citizens.
• In some cases, Hmong refugees have been deported to countries where they’ve never lived, Fresno community leaders told The Bee.
• The analysis was based on individual arrest records between January 2024 and March 2026 reported by ICE and processed through UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.

What This Means for You

The administration tried similar pressure tactics on Southeast Asian countries during Trump’s first term, then ramped up those efforts in 2025 during his second term.

For Fresno specifically, families in local neighborhoods — refugees who fought alongside the U.S. during the Vietnam War and their children — are now facing deportation to countries they fled or have never lived in.

“A lot of them are refugees or children of these veterans (and) have committed a senseless crime when they were teenagers,” Pao Yang, president and CEO of The Fresno Center, told The Bee. “And then now you’re sending these children of these veterans that fought with the U.S. back to a country that they were fighting against with you.”

What to Watch

The Trump administration is using visa restrictions as leverage to force countries like Laos to accept deportees, even though Laos doesn’t have a formal repatriation agreement with the U.S.

The analysis found 56% of AAPI Californians arrested by ICE had no criminal record — meaning more than half of these arrests are not targeting people convicted of crimes, but people whose only offense is their immigration status.