New Detention Numbers Are Out, ICE Still Hiding Data on 'Alligator Alcatraz'
At least 56,945 immigrants are held in ICE detention this week, with untold numbers hidden from public view in off-the-books sites in Florida and in field offices across the country.
According to the latest data published by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the number of immigrants held in detention on July 27 (just four days ago, fast turnaround) reached 56,945, a slight bump from 56,816 two weeks prior, with little change in the composition of who is detained.
As I’ve explained before, even if the number of immigrants detained on a single day does not change much, people are still being processed through the system. From a data perspective, there’s just no aggregate increase because the number of people booked into detention is not substantially higher than the number of people released from detention back into the community or through the deportation process.
The most significant omission in ICE’s data is the absence of any information about the facility in Florida known colloquially as “Alligator Alcatraz,” located deep in the Everglades. This omission exists because the facility is operated by the state of Florida, not by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and detainees held there are not formally in ICE custody.
As a result, they do not appear in ICE’s public detention database, making it virtually impossible for families, attorneys, or advocates to locate them, verify their status, or even confirm whether they have been deported. Although ICE officials have toured the facility and consulted on operations, they have perplexingly insisted that “the ultimate decision of who to detain belongs to Florida,” according to the New York Times.
This arrangement exploits a legal gray area, a sort of on-shored Guantánamo Bay detention facility that can and should be challenged in court. Immigration detention is supposed to be a federal function. Still, in this case, Florida has used emergency powers to open and operate a de facto immigration prison without clear federal oversight. The result is a system with little transparency, with no access for attorneys, and no commitment to reporting the detained population as required by Congress.
As state officials plan to expand the facility to hold up to 4,000 people, the fact that none of these detainees are included in ICE’s official detention data represents a troubling blind spot in public accountability and a significant distortion in how we understand the scope and geography of immigration enforcement in the United States.
This is not an isolated case. Across the country, untold numbers of immigrants are also held in local jails, including those with 287(g) agreements, many of which are not required to report detainee information to the federal government in a consistent or public-facing way.
In addition, more reports are coming out about immigrants being held temporarily in local ICE field offices, subfield facilities, or staging areas before being transferred to longer-term detention sites. These short-term or quasi-official holding spaces often fall outside the scope of ICE’s published data, making them effectively invisible to the public.
Taken together, these sites represent a sprawling network of “off-the-books” detention that undermines public transparency and complicates efforts to monitor the scale and conditions of immigration enforcement in real time.
Back to the actually-reported ICE data, the composition of detainees based on criminal history has not changed much in the past two weeks, with total numbers increasing slightly but no observable percentage change. The graph and table below show the data since the start of the Trump administration. For a longer duration of data, visit my previous posts on immigrant detention.
ICE arrests continues to drive the observable growth in overall detained numbers while CBP arrests and detains fewer—but not zero—immigrants.
Starting with this post, I’m including a regular data update tracking shifts in ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. The latest numbers continue a trend I’ve been monitoring for months: SmartLINK usage is gradually declining, while the number of people on GPS ankle monitors—though still smaller overall—is steadily rising. The remaining technologies, including VeriWatch and telephonic check-ins, account for a very small share of the total and are grouped under “Other” in the data visualizations. That category is also slowly declining.
As I wrote earlier this week, The Washington Post published a revealing article about this directive and the broader return to punitive surveillance tools. In that post, I unpacked the memo obtained by the Post, walked through ICE’s four core monitoring technologies, and explained how the ATD program, despite its name, functions more as an expansion of detention than a true alternative. If you missed that background, be sure to go back and read the post titled “Trump Administration Orders Massive Expansion of GPS Ankle Monitors for Immigrants.“
Learn more about immigrant detention
And don’t forget to register for my upcoming public discussion with Anton Flores about his new book on immigrant hospitality.
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A number of farmworkers from the Glass House raids were coerced into signing expedited removal documents and were deported within 48 hours of their arrests. Most if not all to Tijuana, Mexico. They were held at Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Will they show up in detention numbers? Removals Or not at all?
Appreciate your work, @Austin Kocher