ICE's Detained Population Now at Record 61,226 People
ICE's latest data show record detention numbers, growing GPS ankle monitor usage, and dip in arrests since June. PLUS: This newsletter just crossed 10,000 subscribers—thank you! 🎉
ICE's total detained population has reached its highest verifiable point in several years—and possibly the highest point in history—with 61,226 people held in detention as of August 24. Congress required ICE to begin publishing detention data regularly for the first time in 2019. Prior to that, we had only scattered data points that never crossed 60,000. Some reporters in recent weeks have published unverified reports that the single-day ICE detained population crossed the 60,000 threshold, but today marks the first time that verified data supports this observation.
While the total number of official facilities used by ICE currently stands at 186, these numbers still do not include many places that ICE does not report on, including temporary holding facilities in field offices and courts, Alligator Alcatraz (which is currently being shut down), or people in US Marshal custody. It does include the new and highly-controversial Fort Bliss detention site near El Paso (officially named “ERO EL PASO CAMP EAST MONTANA” in the data)1, which previously served as the site of Japanese internment in the 1940s.
Learn more about Japanese internment through this incredible mapping project as well as the Library of Congress’s Behind Barbed Wire project (see it before the Trump administration hides information about internment).
Sorry to interrupt, but I have an exciting announcement. Just this week, the total number of subscribers to this Substack newsletter crossed 10,000 for the first time! I don’t usually care about these types of metrics. I write the same way for 10,000 people as I did for 10 people. At the same time, this feels like an incredible milestone, and I’m so grateful to all of you for being a part of this conversation. Thank you!
Before I get further into the data on who is in ICE detention, I want to note that ICE’s arrests have declined since June, from over 30,000 to a little less than 29,000 estimated for the month of August. I am inferring this using ICE’s reported data on ICE book-ins, which, as I showed recently using the Deportation Data Project’s data, does reliably approximate ICE arrests. David Bier has suggested that the decline could be due to a court order that limited ICE arrests in Southern California. Another factor here is that maintaining extremely high numbers of arrests takes a lot of resources. Many reports cite frustration, burnout, and understaffing at the agency—problems that are unfortunately being solved by lowering hiring requirements and reducing the quality of training. Either way, with a large influx of cash on the way, we could still see further spikes in arrests.
ICE Detention: Criminal History
Among people arrested by ICE, the composition by criminal history remains more or less the same, with about 1/3 in each category of having criminal convictions, criminal charges, and no criminal history. To emphasize, we don’t know what the criminal charges and convictions are, so we can’t assume that they represent particularly egregious crimes; nor can we assume that someone without a criminal charge/conviction in the US doesn’t have a charge/conviction in another country. This isn’t a moral or political perspective—this is just what the data says.
Here’s the updated table that goes with the graph above.
My focus has really been on people in detention as a result of ICE enforcement rather than as a result of CBP enforcement for reasons I laid out in a post at the beginning of the year. But I do want to show the total breakdown by criminal history across people arrested by both ICE and CBP, currently in detention. When CBP numbers are included, the total number of people without criminal history represents 45%.
GPS Ankle Shackles Continue to Grow
I've included a new graph that I first featured in my post on the last release of ICE detention data: the alternatives to detention population is shifting, not so much in terms of total numbers, but in terms of what kind of technology the agency is using. The Trump administration is emphasizing the use of GPS ankle shackles rather than SmartLINK or other types of technology. This appears to be driven by a goal of inflicting more punitive types of monitoring, not because these types of monitoring are actually more effective at ensuring people attend their court hearings and ICE check-ins.
This is my newest addition to the list of graphs: a chart of GPS ankle monitor usage since 2020 to show the full context of where we are right now. I don’t believe ICE has ever had more than 35,000 people on ankle monitors at one time, but we could be approaching that soon. Currently, there are over 28,000 people on ankle monitors; at this rate, we could see another 7,000 more by the end of the year.
Please use these graphs and the underlying data in any way that is helpful to you—you don’t need to ask permission, just please provide attribution and a link back to this post.
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The original text of this post said that the data did not include the new Fort Bliss site. I was wrong because I looked for Fort Bliss and did not recognize the official name. I would like to thank William in the comments for pointing this out.
Thanks, as ever, for these data and your astute analysis, Austin. And congrats on 10K subscribers!
I used this with my high school AP government students. Thanks so much!