Behind the National Dip, Many ICE Detention Facilities Across the Country Are Surging

The national number declined, but individual facilities are growing fast. New detention centers are opening and existing ones are reaching record populations.

The latest ICE data showed a slight decline in the total national detained population, from a record 70,766 on January 24 to 68,289 on February 7. As I discussed in my previous post, that drop may reflect a combination of legal challenges and routine fluctuation. But this slight national decline should not be over-interpreted as an indication that ICE is slowing down its mass detention expansion.

When you look at individual detention facilities, the picture changes dramatically. Across the country, detention centers are growing, and some are growing fast. Several facilities that barely existed a few months ago now hold hundreds or even thousands of people. Others that were already large have surged to new highs since the start of the year. The national decline does not mean the system is contracting. Rather, it means the expansion is uneven, and tracking it requires looking beyond the top-line number.

This is exactly what DetentionReports.com is designed to do, and we encourage local reporters and researchers near these facilities to use our findings as a prompt to understand more about the local and regional effects of scaling up detention at these locations. Every facility that we profile below includes a link to its full report on the site, where you can find population trends, detainee classification data, and available contracts. The data in this post is current as of February 5, 2026.

Facilities With Sharp Recent Spikes

The following seven facilities stand out for the speed and scale of their recent population increases. Some are newly activated facilities that went from zero to hundreds or thousands in a matter of weeks. Others are existing facilities where population growth has accelerated dramatically. We look at them below from largest to smallest.

California City Immigration Processing Center, CA (CACTYCA) now holds an estimated 1,521 people, up from roughly 400 just a few months ago. The facility did not appear in ICE data until late in fiscal year 2025 and has grown rapidly since.

Folkston D Ray ICE Processing Center, GA (FIPCDGA) has climbed to an estimated 1,346 people. Like California City, the facility’s growth has been steep, rising from near zero to over a thousand in roughly six months.

Diamondback Correctional Facility, OK (OKDBACK) appeared in ICE data only recently and already holds an estimated 624 people. This is a facility that effectively did not exist in the detention system a few weeks ago. This is probably the most dramatic spike in the list.

McCook Detention Center, NE (MCCKNE) has grown from near zero to an estimated 153 people in a matter of months. McCook is a small city in southwestern Nebraska, far from any major immigration court or legal services infrastructure.

Christian County Jail, KY (CHRISKY) did not hold ICE detainees until this fiscal year and now holds an estimated 135 people. The facility’s population has grown steadily with each data release.

South Central Regional Jail, WV (WVSCENT) has been part of ICE’s network since at least 2024, but its population has spiked recently from the range of 40 to 60 up to an estimated 83. For a small regional jail in West Virginia, that is a significant jump.

Collier County Naples Jail Center, FL (COLLIFL) has seen a steady upward trend over two years, but the most recent data shows a sharp increase to an estimated 66 people, nearly double its population from late 2024.

What stands out about this list is not just the growth but the geography. These seven facilities are located in California, Georgia, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Florida. This is not detention expansion concentrated along the border or in the traditional detention corridor through Louisiana and Texas. This is a national expansion. ICE is building out a detention network that reaches into communities and regions that had little or no exposure to immigrant detention before.

Facilities Running High Since the Start of 2026

Not every facility that demands attention is spiking in the dramatic way the facilities above are. The following four have been operating at high or record populations since the beginning of fiscal year 2026, and they remain among the largest in the system.

Denver Contract Detention Facility, CO (DENICDF) has been one of ICE’s largest facilities for years, but its recent population of an estimated 1,447 people represents a new high. The facility has held between 800 and 1,200 people for much of the past two years. The jump to nearly 1,500 is notable.

North Lake Correctional Facility, MI (NRLKCMI) now holds an estimated 1,467 people. North Lake came online for ICE detention in mid-2025 and has grown at a remarkable pace, going from a few dozen to nearly 1,500 in about six months. It is now one of the ten largest facilities in the country.

Baker Correctional Institution, FL (FLBAKCI) holds an estimated 971 people. Like several facilities on this list, Baker is a state correctional institution repurposed for ICE detention. It appeared in the data only in late 2025 and has grown quickly.

Miami Correctional Center, IN (MIACORIN) holds an estimated 577 people. Despite its name, the facility is located in central Indiana, not Florida. It is another state prison facility brought into the ICE detention network this fiscal year and has grown steadily since.

A Note on Dilley

One other development worth flagging: ICE is now reporting a separate facility entry for single adult females held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center (South Texas Family Residential Facility) in south Texas. Previously, these numbers were combined with the family detention population at Dilley. The data now breaks them out as a distinct facility. Nothing has materially changed in terms of operations. Single adult women held at Dilley are housed separately from the family detention side of the facility, so the two populations are not mixed. But if you track Dilley’s numbers over time, you will notice the split in the data, and this is the reason.

Look Beyond the National Detention Numbers

The national detained population is the number that gets the headline—and as I’ve said before, we’re going to see this general trend toward month-over-month record breaking highs. When the national detention number goes up, the headline writes itself. But when it goes down, as it did in early February, there is a temptation to interpret that as a sign that the expansion is slowing or that there is no story this week. This is shortsighted. As the facility-level data shows, the detention system is still growing in important ways but you have to look at individual facilities to see this trend.

As the reports show, new facilities are coming online every week and existing facilities are reaching record populations. The geography of detention is expanding into states and communities that had no significant role in the system a year ago.

This is why facility-level data matters, and why Adam Sawyer and our team built DetentionReports.com. Every facility discussed in this post has a full report on the site with population trends, detainee classification breakdowns, and, where available, contract documents. If you are a reporter, researcher, advocate, or community member tracking what is happening in your area, the data is there.

We will continue to update these reports every time ICE publishes new data. If you have questions about specific facilities or notice something in the data, reach out to Adam at adam@relevant-research.com or on Bluesky.

Support Public Scholarship

This week I shared some reflections on the impact this newsletter is having on the national immigration conversation and why reader support matters more than ever. You can read that post here. If you have the means and believe in this work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.