ICE Delaney Hall Detention Center in New Jersey.Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/Zuma
The number of immigrants detained in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities across the country has reached a record high of more than 56,000, according to the agency’s most recent data release. The whopping figure marks the largest total detainee population in ICE custody since at least August 2019, when there were 55,654 immigrants detained. (ICE started releasing semi-monthly detention statistics during Trump’s first term per a mandate from Congress.)
As Austin Kocher, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies immigration enforcement, notes, this could possibly be the highest number of detained immigrants on record. “It is certainly the largest detained population since ICE began reporting detention data during the first Trump administration,” Kocher wrote in a Substack post about the most recent data.
The spike in detention numbers comes as the Trump administration is doubling down on efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement with sweeping worksite raids and courthouse arrests. For several months, administration officials, under pressure to deliver on the president’s mass deportation agenda, have expressed frustration with ICE’s numbers.
During a May meeting at the agency’s headquarters, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller reportedly chastised top immigration enforcement officers, demanding a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day—more than triple the average number of this current term. “All that matters is numbers, pure numbers,” a source with ICE told the New York Post. “Quantity over quality.”
Miller, people familiar with the meeting told the Wall Street Journal, instructed the officers to cast a wide net and target places like Home Depot and 7-Eleven stores. In the aftermath of the aggressive marching orders, ICE conducted sweeping operations across Los Angeles, sparking protests and the administration’s deployment of National Guard troops.
This past week, Trump walked back on a short-lived order for ICE agents to halt immigration enforcement operations targeting the agriculture and hospitality industries. “We’re going to continue to do worksite enforcement operations, even on farms and hotels, but based on a prioritized basis,” border czar Tom Homan said on Thursday. “But based on a prioritized basis. Criminals come first.”
But the numbers tell a different story. What is driving the growth in the number of immigrants detained by ICE, Kocher noted, is people with no criminal convictions, only immigration violations. A recent Guardian data analysis also found that the agency’s figures are boosted by an increase in detention of immigrants without criminal history. Between January and June, its reporting shows, there was an 807 percent spike in arrests of people without a record.
To increase the number of detention beds available, the administration is expanding lucrative contracts with private prison companies and reopening previously closed detention centers, including ones that failed to meet minimum standard requirements.
The record high detention numbers also raise concerns about overcrowding, especially since the Department of Homeland Security is imposing new rules restricting access by members of Congress to ICE facilities. The policy change followed incidents in recent days when Democratic lawmakers in Illinois, California, and New York were denied entry to processing centers and detention facilities. “If ICE has nothing to hide,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement, “DHS must make its facilities available.”