Newly obtained data shows just through July of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested about three times as many people in San Diego as compared to all of 2024. Those arrests in San Diego have grown at a higher rate than nationwide, the numbers show, driven by a major spike in arrests of those without a criminal record. NBC 7 Investigates obtained the Department of Homeland Security data via a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency did not respond to request for comment. The numbers show that in all of 2024, ICE arrested 603 people in San Diego. From January through the end of July this year, that figure rose to 1,990 — more than three times as many people, in five fewer months. Last year, 155 of those 603 arrests in San Diego were people without a criminal conviction, according to the data. This year, that was 1,037 of the 1,990 arrests. That’s nearly seven times as many people as compared to 2024, again just through the end of July. “I’ve seen many, many people with zero criminal record being arrested at the immigration courts here in San Diego,” said attorney David Landry. “One of my clients was one of the first ones that was arrested outside of immigration court. He had zero criminal record. We had already applied for asylum. He had a relatively strong claim. Then he was just taken away with no notice.” Nationwide, the numbers show ICE has arrested 142,886 people in the first seven months of this year, as compared to 109,685 arrests in all of 2024 – up about 30%. This year, 56,499 of those arrested had a criminal conviction, 43,450 had pending charges and 42,397 had no criminal history at all, according to the data. The rise in total arrests has been driven largely by steeper increases in the latter two categories. Arrests nationwide of those without a conviction or pending charges were up just shy of double, compared to the seven-fold increase in San Diego. Local This latest data shows a departure from President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of targeting violent criminals, his administration often noting their focus on deporting the “worst first.” “I would say that, if anything, he’s deporting the innocent first,” Landry said. He noted many of the people he’s seen detained without a criminal record are those who entered the U.S. seeking asylum, or under a different administration, operating with a different interpretation of the rules. “We're unfortunately seeing quite a bit of that right now: Persons that came in were paroled into the United States under the processes that were established under President Biden, that have done everything that they've been ordered to do by the government, are still being arrested,” Landry said. “The Immigration and Nationality Act, the law that the government works under, and the courts’ interpretations of that law has given the government quite a bit of leeway, quite a bit of discretion as to how they handle these circumstances and who they place into removal proceedings.” He added that the arrests, particularly at the courthouse, have generated fear among his clients, but those who don’t attend their hearings as required are automatically ordered removed. “Many of them are worried that, ‘Hey, I'm afraid to go to court because I'm going to be arrested,’” Landry said. “A lot of my clients are women and women with children. So if I've got a client that's a mother with three or four children, that person is very, is terrified to go to court and to do what they're supposed to be doing because if the government takes that person away, who's going to care for the children?” Those courthouse arrests have subsided in recent weeks following an order from a federal judge out of Washington, D.C. But Landry said the arrests have sparked fear in immigrant communities of all law enforcement, relaying the experience of a client in North County. “She was the victim of severe domestic violence, and when she called to find out what she should do, we told her, ‘You need to call the police.’ She was terrified to call the police,” Landry said. “If you can't trust law enforcement, you can't, you have to do things on your own.”