New ICE Data Shows Nearly 3,000 Immigration Arrests Recorded Across Long Island; See Where They Happened

HEMPSTEAD, NY – Nearly 3,000 immigration arrests were recorded across Long Island since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a LongIslandGuide.com analysis of newly released federal immigration enforcement data.

The analysis identified 2,940 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests recorded in Nassau and Suffolk counties from Jan. 20, 2025 through the latest available federal data released in August 2026.

Nassau County accounted for 2,008 arrests, or approximately 68% of the Long Island total, while 932 arrests were recorded in Suffolk County.

Bethpage had the largest number of apprehensions recorded in any Long Island community, followed by Hempstead, Mineola, Brentwood, Freeport and East Meadow.

The findings come from individual-level ICE administrative arrest records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and made publicly available by the Deportation Data Project, a research project based at the University of California, Berkeley and UCLA.

The latest release includes ICE enforcement data through Aug. 6, 2026 and, for the first time, provides an “Apprehension City” field that allows researchers and journalists to examine arrest activity at a much more local level.

Bethpage Leads Long Island in ICE Arrests Recorded in New Data

Bethpage topped the Long Island list with 344 ICE arrests recorded during the period analyzed. Hempstead followed with 272, while Mineola had 251.

Brentwood had the highest total in Suffolk County with 118 arrests, followed by Central Islip with 94 and Riverhead with 81.

Rank	Community	County	ICE Arrests
1	Bethpage	Nassau	344
2	Hempstead	Nassau	272
3	Mineola	Nassau	251
4	Brentwood	Suffolk	118
5	Freeport	Nassau	116
6	East Meadow	Nassau	113
7	Westbury	Nassau	108
8	Williston Park	Nassau	101
9	Central Islip	Suffolk	94
10	Syosset	Nassau	82
11	Riverhead	Suffolk	81
12	Huntington Station	Suffolk	73
13	Elmont	Nassau	70
14	Yaphank	Suffolk	69
15	Uniondale	Nassau	60
16	Baldwin	Nassau	55
17	Bay Shore	Suffolk	55
18	Holtsville	Suffolk	50
19	Hicksville	Nassau	45
20	Roosevelt	Nassau	42

The geographic figures should be interpreted carefully. The ICE field identifies the community recorded as the apprehension city. It does not establish that the person arrested lived in that community, nor does it necessarily represent a conventional street arrest.

Some locations appear to be influenced by government facilities, probation activity, correctional facilities, processing locations and other concentrated enforcement activity.

Different Long Island Communities Show Very Different Arrest Patterns

The underlying records reveal striking differences in the types of arrests recorded in some of the communities with the highest totals.

In Bethpage, 229 of 344 arrests, approximately two-thirds of the total, involved people ICE classified as “Other Immigration Violator.” Another 54 involved people classified as convicted criminals and 61 involved people with pending criminal charges.

The Bethpage records were also overwhelmingly classified as at-large enforcement activity, rather than arrests associated with the 287(g) program. The federal data alone does not explain why Bethpage recorded such a high concentration of apprehensions.

Mineola presents a very different picture. Of approximately 250 arrests recorded there, nearly nine out of 10 involved people ICE classified as convicted criminals.

That pattern is consistent with previously reported immigration enforcement activity involving the Nassau County Probation Department in Mineola. The county’s probation department operates its Administration and Criminal Division at 400 County Seat Drive, and published reports have documented ICE arrests involving immigrants appearing for court-ordered probation appointments.

East Meadow also has an important institutional connection to immigration enforcement. The Nassau County Correctional Center is located there, and federal court records have documented ICE processing at a “Nassau County ICE Intake” location in East Meadow before individuals were placed in or transferred through the county correctional center.

Williston Park showed yet another unusual pattern. A majority of the approximately 100 arrests recorded there were coded in the federal data as associated with the 287(g) Program, an immigration enforcement program involving cooperation between ICE and participating local law enforcement agencies.

Those differences illustrate why apprehension-city totals should not automatically be interpreted as measures of immigration enforcement against residents of each community. In some places, institutional activity can substantially influence the location recorded by ICE.

Nearly Half of Long Island Arrests Classified as “Other Immigration Violator”

LongIslandGuide.com’s analysis also examined the criminality classification attached to each Long Island arrest.

ICE Classification	Arrests	Share of Long Island Total
Other Immigration Violator	1,391	47.3%
Convicted Criminal	954	32.4%
Pending Criminal Charges	595	20.2%
Total	2,940	100%

The terminology above reflects the classifications contained in ICE’s own data. The category “Other Immigration Violator” should not automatically be interpreted as a definitive statement that a person has never had any contact with the criminal justice system. It indicates the criminality category assigned to that apprehension in the ICE dataset.

Overall, approximately 47% of the Long Island arrests were classified as Other Immigration Violator, while about 32% involved people classified as convicted criminals and approximately 20% involved pending criminal charges.

Long Island ICE Arrests Rose Sharply During 2025, Peaked in January 2026

The data also shows a significant change in the pace of immigration arrests over time.

Long Island recorded 222 arrests in June 2025 before monthly totals climbed to 232 in August, 236 in September, 279 in October and 282 in November.

Arrests reached their highest full-month level in January 2026, when 319 ICE apprehensions were recorded across Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Activity then declined substantially. The monthly total fell to 215 in February, 156 in March, 59 in April, 84 in May, 80 in June and just 72 in July 2026.

Month	Long Island ICE Arrests
January 2025*	13
February 2025	50
March 2025	37
April 2025	87
May 2025	71
June 2025	222
July 2025	215
August 2025	232
September 2025	236
October 2025	279
November 2025	282
December 2025	216
January 2026	319
February 2026	215
March 2026	156
April 2026	59
May 2026	84
June 2026	80
July 2026	72
August 2026*	15

*January 2025 represents only the period beginning Jan. 20. August 2026 is a partial month because the federal release extends only through Aug. 6, with the latest New York apprehension appearing in the analyzed file on Aug. 5.

Comparing full months, the decline from the January 2026 peak of 319 arrests to 72 arrests in July represents a drop of approximately 77%.

Nassau Accounted for More Than Two-Thirds of Long Island Arrests

The geographic split was heavily weighted toward Nassau County.

Area	ICE Arrests	Share of Long Island Total
Nassau County	2,008	68.3%
Suffolk County	932	31.7%
Long Island Total	2,940	100%

The data also classified 2,655 of the 2,940 Long Island arrests as at-large arrests under ICE’s simplified apprehension-method field. Another 215 were classified as associated with the 287(g) Program.

How LongIslandGuide.com Analyzed the Data

The underlying records were obtained by ICE through federal immigration enforcement systems and released in response to Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the Deportation Data Project. The project’s latest release contains enforcement records through Aug. 6, 2026.

LongIslandGuide.com filtered the arrest records to New York apprehensions beginning Jan. 20, 2025, then identified entries whose ICE-recorded apprehension city corresponds to communities in Nassau or Suffolk County.

Community names were normalized for capitalization, spelling variations and apparent typographical errors. For example, differently capitalized versions of the same community were treated as one location.

The analysis also excluded likely duplicate arrest records using the Deportation Data Project’s duplicate_episode_first field. The project defines an arrest episode as arrests involving the same individual occurring within 24 hours and flags the first record in each episode for researchers seeking to avoid likely duplicate enforcement records.

Applying that methodology reduced the New York dataset from 19,548 rows to 19,394 arrest episodes. The resulting Long Island analysis identified 2,940 apprehensions recorded in Nassau and Suffolk communities.

The Deportation Data Project cautions that the newly released apprehension-city field appears to be manually entered and sometimes contains inconsistent spellings, errors or missing information. The project says approximately 4% of observations since 2025 have a missing city.

For that reason, the totals in this analysis should be understood as arrests that ICE recorded in Nassau and Suffolk communities rather than a definitive count of arrests involving residents of those communities. The data may also undercount Long Island apprehensions when the city field is missing or cannot reliably be assigned to Nassau or Suffolk.

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Key Facts and Details

Data analyzed	Individual-level ICE administrative arrest records
Period analyzed	Jan. 20, 2025 through the August 2026 data release
Long Island arrests identified	2,940
Nassau County	2,008
Suffolk County	932
Community with most recorded arrests	Bethpage, 344
Convicted Criminal classification	954
Pending Criminal Charges classification	595
Other Immigration Violator classification	1,391
Peak full month	January 2026, 319 arrests
Primary data source	U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained and processed by the Deportation Data Project

Sources

Primary data: Deportation Data Project, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement processed datasets and August 2026 data release. Methodology and definitions: Deportation Data Project ICE data documentation and ICE core data codebook. Additional context: Nassau County Probation Department information, federal court records involving ICE intake and the Nassau County Correctional Center in East Meadow, and previously published reporting concerning immigration enforcement activity in Nassau County.

The newly available city-level federal data provides one of the clearest looks yet at where ICE enforcement activity has been recorded across Long Island, while also showing why the raw location totals require context. Bethpage, Mineola, East Meadow and Williston Park all rank relatively high, but the records reveal markedly different enforcement patterns behind those numbers, underscoring that an apprehension city can reflect not only where agents operate but also where courts, probation offices, correctional facilities and immigration enforcement programs intersect.