LISTEN: A now 2-year-old state law mandating Georgia law enforcement cooperate with ICE is likely why the state has been spared the federal presence in places like Minneapolis. GPB's Grant Blankenship explains.
On the Sunday after Renee Macklin Good's killing by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, a crowd gathered in Macon's Tatnall Square Park to protest.
After speeches and the reading of the names of all the other ICE-related deaths over the last year, a speaker challenged the group.
“If you are angry, make some noise!” she said.
The crowd responded with cheers and the now-recognizable sound of coaches’ whistles.
In Minneapolis and elsewhere, the whistles have come to mean something: ICE is here — though in Tattnall Square Park there were no ICE officers to inspire the alarm. That’s not to say ICE has not been making immigration arrests in Georgia during the now-year-old immigration crackdown in President Trump’s second term. In fact, Georgia is an immigration leader among U.S. states.
The Deportation Data Project at University of California-Berkeley compiles ICE statistics as they receive them from a standing, recurring open record request. Their work has recently informed analysis by the New York Times and NPR.
According to analysis of Deportation Data Project numbers by GPB, Georgia is just outside the top 10 U.S. states for immigration arrests per capita, at least through last October. Minnesota is No. 36. California, 25th.
In terms of raw numbers of arrests, Georgia takes the No. 4 spot, behind Texas, Florida and California.
Georgia immigration attorney Charles Kuck said those numbers reflect something of a return to form for the state.
“It doesn't surprise me at all,” Kuck said. “Normal operations, normal detentions, occasional larger group pickups in a job site — none of that is unusual, dating back to the Clinton administration.”
Those things are neither unusual nor illegal. The thing that’s new is the level of Georgia's cooperation with federal immigration officers. Attorney Samantha Hamilton says the engine behind that cooperation has a name.
“So in 2024, the Georgia General Assembly passed a law called the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act,” Hamilton said.
It’s also known as House Bill 1105. Under federal law, local law enforcement cooperation with immigration officers is optional. Under HB 1105, Georgia law enforcement agencies are mandated to cooperate to some extent.
About a third of Georgia arrests appear to be from local law enforcement turning people over to ICE after they have already been in law enforcement custody for reasons unrelated to immigration. That’s a level of cooperation that federal officials like Customs and Border Patrol “czar” Tom Homan have appeared frustrated not to have in places like Minneapolis.
“If they’d let us in their damn jail and stop being a sanctuary city, we could arrest the bad guy in the safety and security of a jail,” Homan fumed in a press gaggle outside the White House. “But because they knowingly release them, we have to go into the community.”
Hamilton said she thinks HB 1105 is, in this way, working as intended.
“HB 1105 is also maybe the main reason why Georgia has not looked necessarily quite like Minneapolis or Chicago or L.A., where these, like, massive performative raids are happening really visibly,” Hamilton said.
Vice President JD Vance has said the public is only seeing what he calls “chaotic ICE raids” where local officials fight federal law enforcement. Attorney Charles Kuck said Georgia is not fighting.
“There's no need for ICE to stir up the communities here,” Kuck said.
Only about 10% of the immigration arrests in Georgia through October 2025 are listed as so-called custodial arrests, aka ICE, in the streets, getting people themselves. The single largest source of ICE success in Georgia are arrests recorded as non-custodial arrests under something called non-detained docket.
“If they're on the non-detained docket, it means that they are in removal proceedings, but they're not detained,” Hamilton explained.
That means people who have immigration cases or are already involved in immigration proceedings but heretofore have been living here, in the world and not in ICE detention. Hamilton said she has heard from many of her colleagues that their clients are being arrested when they travel to an ICE office for their regular check-in or when they have a day in immigration court. Hamilton said that is no less traumatic than being taken in the street.
“The act of someone being snatched from their family, disappeared for hours, you know, not knowing where they were going to be taken?” she said. “Like, that is also an act of violence.”
Charles Kuck has seen this side of immigration enforcement, too.
“A man I talked to yesterday was picked up with his wife, who's just becoming a resident, his kids who are citizens, his grandkids are citizens,” Kuck said. “He has committed no crime other than working. That's life-destroying. That's family-destroying.”
Even, said Kuck and Hamilton, when it happens out of sight.
