Federal law enforcement officials tell NY1 exclusively that they have made as many as 75 immigration arrests in New York since Tuesday.

The Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed it’s been on hundreds of immigration operations since the increased enforcement began a few days ago.


What You Need To Know

  • The Drug Enforcement Administration confirmed it has taken part in hundreds of immigration operations in since Tuesday

  • There have been as many as 75 arrests so far, mainly in the five boroughs, according to the DEA

  • The DEA has committed between 50 to 65 agents out of its more than 300 agents in the New York division to the immigration efforts

  • The agency can participate in immigration-related arrests because of a policy change made by the Trump administration

Despite President Donald Trump nixing a federal policy that kept U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as churches and schools, no operations involving the DEA have taken place at these sites, according to Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge for the agency in New York.

Nearly all the arrests from the DEA came in the five boroughs.

Agents there now have the power to make immigration arrests after the Department of Homeland Security acting secretary issued a memo, allowing some federal agents other than ICE to do so.

“This is really a renewed commitment to do more to keep our city safe,” Tarentino said.

According to Tarentino, there are between 50 and 65 of his more than 300 agents who are now dedicated to this effort, and that they went through some training on these new types of arrests they would be confronted with.

He said he does not anticipate moving around about 20% of his agents to have an impact on the work they do beyond this new priority.

“We have an adaptable workforce,” Tarentino said.

He said most of the arrests so far are people with violent criminal records and drug traffickers, which were the targets in the operations. The arrests included someone wanted for an out-of-state double homicide and several gang members, according to Tarentino.  

The number of immigration-related arrests, simply on the teams DEA is part of, is about double the average daily immigration arrests in the city from October 2023 to September 2024 when President Joe Biden was in charge, according to data from ICE.

“This concentrated effort of law enforcement professionals doing the work that maybe we were doing independently and separately and not as coordinated as efficiently and effectively as it is now,” Tarentino said.

The DEA did not have a breakdown of how many of the people arrested since Tuesday were solely for immigration violations, as opposed to for criminal records.

The Trump administration has said these operations could lead to arrests beyond the initial criminal targets.

NY1 asked Tarentino what happens when agents come across others during operations.

“The DEA agents will turn those individuals over to our ICE [Enforcement and Removal Operations] officials who will make the determination if they have any issues with immigration,” he said.

Following an ICE operation at a fish market in Newark, New Jersey earlier this month, the city’s mayor accused federal agents of racially profiling people. This came after he said undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens were detained at first during the arrests.  

“So, my response to that is how do you determine who’s undocumented and who’s a criminal just by looking at them,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said during a news conference afterward.

An ICE official responded in a statement at the time that agents “may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity.”

When asked about his thoughts on the concern these operations can lead to racial profiling, Tarentino said the DEA has a lot of intelligence and details on who they are looking for before they do enforcement.

“During the course of those enforcement operations, we may encounter individuals we are unaware of and in those instances we still do all of our research and check all of our indices and check with all our partners to make sure we properly identify who we are dealing with,” he said. “And so I can tell you, as a professional and a career law enforcement officer, our goal, our number one goal, is to keep the community safe.”

Tarentino said this coordinated immigration enforcement is priority one and will be in the weeks to come.