First Look: ICE's Detained Population Declines Under Trump

ICE published its first detention data of the Trump administration. Let's see how it compares to recent numbers under Biden.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is required by Congress to publish data on its detained population approximately every two weeks. ICE just published new data today, and I’ve already had a look at it.

The data (available online here) shows the breakdown of how many people are in detention, an overview of criminal histories (which I discuss in greater detail here), and which agencies conducted the arrest that led to detention. The data typically has some delay, so that the data published today (2/3/25) was actually current as of 1/26/2025. This can be found in the footnote tab to the data, if your curious.

The key takeaway for me is that from the previous data released by ICE on 1/11/2025 and 1/26/2025 (which includes the first six blustery days of the Trump administration), ICE’s detained population actually declined from 39,703 to 39,238.

The overall decline came primarily from a decline in people detained by CBP likely due to changes in how people are processed at the border. At the same time, the number of people booked in by ICE did increase slightly—but not at all out of step with the gradual increases we’ve seen over the past two years of the Biden administration. (See my discussion of the previous detention data below.)

Admittedly this includes only the first six days of the Trump administration and the prior days overlap with the Biden administration. But ICE has been touting these numbers on their X/Twitter account every day and making a big show of enforcement activity by going on TV and bringing along Dr. Phil to ICE raids.

To be clear, I’m not saying that ICE hasn’t been doing more enforcement. I’m just saying that—as I told countless reporters last week—it’s not as if all of these people are going to be indefinitely detained and deported. That’s just not how the deportation process works.

We are likely to see this trend continue: fewer ICE detainees from CBP and more from ICE. This isn’t the final word and we will see detention grow dramatically in the coming months and years. But it’s still interesting to see this first look at the data.

So there we have it. The first look at detention data under the Trump administration. Let’s keep this one short since I just published another post today, which you should totally read.

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