Purge in Columbus: More than 1,160 immigrants were allegedly arrested in the capital since January 2025
The White House revealed that more than 1,160 illegal immigrants have been arrested in Columbus since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025.
The administration launched a new website last week that tracks immigration arrests, allowing people to see how many immigrants were arrested in specific cities across the country. The website, whitehouse.gov/aliens, indicated that there have been more than 3.1 million “encounters” nationwide since Trump returned to the White House.
The site also criticized Trump’s predecessors for not previously doing what Trump is doing now.
NBC 4 reported that more than 1,900 illegal immigrants were arrested in central Ohio since the end of January 2025. Within that total, authorities made 1,164 arrests in Columbus, 344 in Westerville, and 83 in Delaware.
Ohio’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office is located in Westerville.
According to the report, the website shows 552 arrests. NBC 4 reported that the discrepancy can be explained by the data including many instances of the city of Columbus misspelled, which resulted in a lower overall number of arrests.
Additionally, the arrest dates for each jurisdiction vary slightly.
Based on a review of The White House’s data, changes range from sexual assault to robbery to homicide. In Columbus, many immigrants who were arrested came from all over the world, including from Haiti and Somalia.
“The site aggregates directly from arrest reports and pulls data directly from DHS, which initially included a handful of non-immigration HSI arrests. This has been updated,” a White House official told the news source.
Outside the Columbus area, 241 arrests were made in Cleveland, 190 in Cincinnati, 75 in Dayton, 14 in Akron, and 13 in Toledo, according to the NBC report.
Eight immigrants were also arrested in Springfield, but none of the immigrants who were arrested came originally from Haiti.
ICE previously conducted “Operation Buckeye,” a targeted immigration enforcement raid in Columbus in December 2025 over one week, which led to 280 arrests in Columbus as well as the neighboring areas.
Meanwhile, liberals have launched or scheduled vigils at Ohio jails that house ICE detainees in Seneca, Mahoning, Geauga, and Butler counties, Axios reported. They also have a vigil planned for the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center.
One of the groups involved in the vigil is Toledo-based 4winds419. The group cites the Four Winds Plan, which it describes as “a revolutionary framework developed by the Black Panthers, the Panthers, and the People’s Core for creating self-sustaining communities outside of the oppressive systems that fail us.”
