ICE Detained Population Highest Since Start of COVID-19 Pandemic

After three and a half years, immigrant detention numbers have reached their pre-pandemic levels of just over 35,000 in September. ICE published this data late and new data should be out soon.

ICE’s latest detention data show that just over 35,000 immigrants were being held in civil detention centers as of September 9. This is the highest since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Detention numbers declined over the course of the pandemic due to social distancing protocols as well as very active habeas corpus litigation by immigration attorneys who were desperate to get at-risk clients out of the Petri dishes that are detention facilities.

I raised concerns in a post on Monday that ICE had not released detention data on its regular 14-day cycle. Interestingly, ICE released its detention data about three hours after I published my post. I don’t want to speculate, but perhaps my post was just the nudge that our friends at ICE needed—or perhaps it was merely a coincidence. Regardless, the agency should release new data by the end of this week to get back on their 14-day cycles.

Note that this data is only current through September 9 although it was released on September 25 and the file was dated September 25. The date that the file itself is published online is naturally not the date that the data is current. The agency typically needs a few days to compile the data into an Excel spreadsheet before posting it online.

To see the original data for yourself, visit ICE’s detention management page here. If you don’t want to sift through the Excel file, you can always go to TRAC’s detention quick facts pages to see easy-to-read summaries of key data points.

If you want a visual look at immigrant detention facilities, photographer Greg Constantine has been documenting detention centers for years and publishing large-print portfolios of the work with interview excerpts through 7 Doors. His website and his photographs are stunning.

If you want more deep-dive analyses of ICE’s detention system, you may enjoy Andrew Free’s new Substack #DetentionKills, which includes some very creative and useful discussions of how Free is using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get more information about how detention works (and doesn’t work) on the inside.

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