Immigrant Detention Numbers Level Off After Weeks of Growth

According to data released by ICE and processed and stored by TRAC, the number of people being held in civil immigrant detention centers appears to have leveled off after several weeks of growth.

The most recent numbers show that about 25,000 people are in detention. The numbers are still not nearly as high as they were during the Trump administration and prior to the pandemic when there were more than 55,000 people in detention on a single day.

The majority of people in detention were arrested by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the agency responsible for border enforcement, while far fewer people were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency primarily responsible for interior enforcement (i.e. non-border enforcement).

ICE arrests appear to be at one of the lowest points in a decades and have not seen a single point of increase since Biden took office. Detentions that originated from CBP arrests, however, are driving the overall numbers. The numbers appeared to peak in July at just over 27,000, then declined over the past several weeks to 25,162 on August 24, 2021.

The figure below was created using data released by ICE and collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. The data is available here.