Immigration Street Sweeps Drove a Surge of ‘Collateral’ Arrests of Noncriminals

A Stateline analysis finds that roughly a quarter of all ICE arrests since August have been classified as “collateral” — bystanders detained alongside a targeted person, a category civil-rights lawyers argue is being used as an end run around constitutional protections. Arizona had the highest rate in the country: nearly one in three immigration arrests there were collateral, followed by Wyoming at 7%. Lawsuits and public outcry appear to have begun cooling the large-scale street sweeps that produced the bulk of these arrests, but tens of thousands of noncriminal detentions had already taken place.