ICE Hasn't Published New Detention Data in Over Three Weeks – and It's a Problem

Where is ICE's latest data on immigrant detention? Trump's supporters and detractors alike are in the dark about immigration enforcement activity. Let's hope they fix it soon.

ICE’s detention data has gone missing. The agency should have updated its congressionally mandated detention spreadsheet a week ago today. But when I checked this morning, the current file is still dated April 16 and the most recent data is current as of April 6, which makes the data a month old.

Here’s what we know, how we know it, and why, despite the possibility that this is an innocent delay, I am worried about what this portends for the public access to this crucial information.

I’ve written about this data set for years, but it doesn’t hurt to review the basics. Since around 2018, Congress has required ICE to produce public data about immigrant detention. Every two weeks or so, typically between Thursday and Friday evening, ICE updates an Excel spreadsheet on its website with new data about immigrants and detention across the country.

Although these data leave much to be desired in quality and granularity, it is one of the most consistent sources of ICE data and therefore incredibly useful for analyzing systemic changes over time. The data set is even more crucial since the Trump administration has started withholding even more authoritative monthly enforcement data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS).

If ICE had stayed on schedule, it would have released new data at the end of last week. ICE doesn’t tell anyone they are updating the spreadsheet, but I have an automation that checks for me. When I didn’t get an alert by Saturday morning, I knew ICE was late. Unusual, perhaps, but not unheard of. But now, a week later, I sense a disturbance in the force. Perhaps ICE is just running very late—or perhaps something more significant has changed.

Is ICE too busy with other matters to follow its obligations to publish the data? Are they afraid that people like me will continue to use their data to explain how the immigration system works—including when their own data contradict the White House’s messaging? Is the Trump administration intentionally choking off all flows of objective data to the public so that all quantitative claims remain unverifiable and must be taken on faith rather than fact?

I’ve been worried for weeks that the administration would cut off access to this data. I sincerely hope that’s not what they are doing.

Allow me to justify my observation—and my concerns—with evidence. Keep in mind that there are two dates I am interested in: (1) the date upon which ICE detention data is current, and (2) the date upon which ICE releases new detention data to the public. Using the time intervals between these dates, we can determine what counts as normal intervals and what counts as delays.

Looking back over the past two fiscal years, we can observe the duration in days between when ICE’s data was pulled out of its databases and then released to the public, typically a few days later. One thing we know is that around the end of each fiscal year, when agencies are busy with end-of-year reporting, there is a predictable delay in ICE detention data.

I wrote about this before during the Biden administration (I hold each administration to the same standard, regardless of political affiliation).

Did ICE Forget Something? Agency Fails to Publish Detention Data in a Month

What is less predictable—and less excusable—are prolonged delays in the middle of the year, when ICE updates its detention data on a regular basis. If we highlight only delays outside of the end of the fiscal year (which I generously code as September through November), we see the following pattern of intervals between the dates upon which data was current.

Using this chart, we can see just how regularly ICE typically produces its detention data. We also see that the current delay in producing data is not just a problem of the Trump administration; there were times during the Biden administration when the agency took longer than usual. But usually the data is pulled from its data systems like clockwork.

The chart above only shows when the data was produced from its data systems, not when it was released. It’s easier for me to visualize these data points because it’s the data point that I track for my work.

However, I decided to also look at the dates that ICE released its detention data spreadsheet according to recent file names. Even if ICE produces the data on schedule, the agency might delay its public release for some reason—so I wanted to check that. Using these dates since the start of the year, we see that ICE has, indeed, become slower at providing the public with new data. Instead of a roughly two-week interval, ICE is now taking longer than three weeks to provide us with a new detention spreadsheet.

Today is Friday, so it is entirely possible ICE will update its spreadsheet right after I publish this post—and this will be a big nothing-burger. A little bureaucratic delay is all. Even so, this post will be worth it.

If delays like this become the norm, it will become harder to understand how ICE’s immigration enforcement practices are changing in real-time and harder to fact-check the administration’s claims about what it is doing. And if ICE tries to avoid reporting these data altogether, it will be like turning off the lights and leaving the public entirely in the dark.

ICE, if you’re out there listening: please publish your detention data accurately and on time. Thank you.

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