This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers (June 13, 2026)

Welcome to the weekly segment called This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers! I’ll highlight some of the main takeaways from the week’s news that you might have missed, but do it in a unique way. Rather than try to summarize everything, I’ll pick a handful of figures each week that best capture where things are moving, explain why they matter, and provide a source where you can learn more. If you have a number to add to the mix or have a question about any of the numbers here, let me know in the comments. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

$70,000,000,000

The amount Congress appropriated to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the end of the Trump administration, now signed into law.

President Trump signed a $70 billion immigration enforcement package into law on June 10, after the House passed it 214-212 and the Senate passed it 52-47—both along party lines. The S.2 reconciliation bill directs about $38 billion to ICE, $26 billion to CBP, and $5 billion to the Department of Homeland Security. A last-minute provision, Section 202(9), sets aside $350 million for ICE operations in cities and states DHS deems non-cooperating, including those that decline 287(g) agreements, which writes the targeting of communities by their local policies directly into the funding. The fight had dragged on since January, when two deadly shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis prompted Democrats to try to rein in the agencies. Because the money moves through reconciliation rather than annual appropriations, it carries none of the usual guardrails, including the transparency measures that require ICE to release basic detention data, and it locks enforcement spending in through the end of the administration where the yearly budget process can no longer check it.

• Altman, H., & D’Avanzo, B. (2026, June 11). What’s in Congress’s New ICE Funding Law?. National Immigration Law Center.

• Hubbard, K. (2026, June 10). Trump signs $70 billion immigration bill, capping lengthy fight over ICE funding. CBS News.

Save the date. This Wednesday, June 17, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, Heidi Altman from the National Immigration Law Center will join me to break down how DHS actually gets funded and what DHS will do with its latest $70 billion. If you want to understand where the money comes from and what Congress just locked in, don’t miss this conversation. Full event announcement coming tomorrow.

$500,000

The conservative estimate, reported by The Atlantic, of what it costs to hold one person for a year at Alligator Alcatraz.

Eric Schlosser reports in The Atlantic that a conservative estimate of holding a single person for a year at Alligator Alcatraz, the state-built detention camp in the Florida Everglades, runs about $500,000, more than sixteen times the roughly $30,000 Florida spends to house a convicted person in state prison. The facility went up in eight days on a remote airstrip with no water, sewer, or power infrastructure, so the state trucks in about 60,000 gallons of water and burns roughly 21,000 gallons of diesel a day. The portable-toilet contractor alone is projected to collect $480 million over about two years. Florida fronted at least half a billion dollars through a no-bid emergency process that steered contracts to DeSantis donors, and the state’s disaster fund has dwindled to roughly $200 million, which may force the camp to close. The figure is what it costs to run detention as political theater.

• Schlosser, E. (2026, June 4). The Alligator Alcatraz Boondoggle. The Atlantic.

1,954

The number of active 287(g) agreements deputizing state and local police for immigration enforcement, up from 134 at the start of 2025.

As of June 12, ICE listed 1,954 active 287(g) agreements across 39 states and two U.S. territories, according to the tracker Andrew Thrasher maintains from ICE’s own published data. The total breaks down into 1,265 task force agreements, 508 warrant service agreements, and 181 jail enforcement agreements. Because a single agency can hold up to three models at once, the agreement count runs higher than the roughly 1,500 distinct agencies involved. The task force model, which lets local officers question and arrest people on suspected immigration violations during routine policing, was shelved in 2012 over racial profiling findings and revived in 2025, and it now accounts for the large majority of agreements.

• Thrasher, A. (2026). ICE 287(g) Program Tracker. Maxwell Commons.

17

The number of naturalized U.S. citizens the Justice Department moved to strip of citizenship in a single announcement.

On June 8 the Justice Department announced civil denaturalization actions against 17 naturalized citizens it accuses of concealing serious offenses during the naturalization process. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, citizenship can be revoked when naturalization was illegally procured or obtained by concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation, and the department described this round as the largest effort it has undertaken to use that authority. Civil denaturalization carries a lower burden of proof than the criminal version and provides no right to appointed counsel, which is part of why legal scholars watch its expansion closely even when the named defendants have serious records. The development extends the reach of enforcement from noncitizens to people who already hold citizenship, a status long treated as settled rather than provisional.

• U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. (2026, June 8). Justice Department Moves to Strip U.S. Citizenship from 17 Naturalized Sex Offenders, Fraudsters, Drug Dealers, and More. U.S. Department of Justice.

8

The number of fired immigration judges who have sued the administration, arguing their terminations were discriminatory and left unexplained.

At least eight immigration judges fired this year have filed suit, all recent appointees the administration declined to retain at the end of their two-year probationary periods. The judges say they were given no explanation for their firings and were denied recourse through the Justice Department’s equal employment process. Their cases test whether the president can remove immigration judges for any reason at all. The suits sit inside a much larger turnover. The EOIR has fired more than 100 judges since January 2025, about half of them probationary, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges, while the department has hired more than 200 replacements drawn heavily from military backgrounds and former ICE attorney ranks. Because immigration judges are the front-line adjudicators who decide individual deportation cases, replacing a large share of the corps and asserting at-will removal further undermines the integrity and independence of the courts.

• Castronuovo, C., & Crepeau, M. (2026, June 10). Fired Immigration Judges Test Trump’s Executive Power in Suits. Bloomberg Law.

5

The number of days a migrant would have to appeal before automatic removal under a DHS-built deportation system being developed for Panama.

Documents obtained by PunchUp and Migrant Insider describe a Migrant Case Management System, internally titled the Panama Case Management System, that the Department of Homeland Security designed, funded, and would be able to access while Panamanian officials run it on the ground. Under the workflow, an enrolled migrant is served an order of detention, biometrically registered, and checked against U.S. watchlists, after which a five-day window opens. If the person does not formally appeal or claim fear of return within those five days, removal proceeds automatically, the name is added to a deportation manifest, and a flight is scheduled, at a designed scale of up to 6,000 cases a year. DHS told the reporters the system would have “no nexus” with U.S. immigration enforcement, though its own performance work statement says U.S. officials would be able to log in to review case files.

• Latchem, T., Neal, W., & Manríquez, P. (2026, June 9). Trump’s Explosive Secret Plan to Stop Migrants Setting Foot on American Soil. PunchUp / Migrant Insider.

30

The number of pounds a Wisconsin mosque leader and legal permanent resident has lost over two months in ICE detention while denied consistent diabetes care.

Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a Palestinian-born green-card holder, has lost about 30 pounds since ICE detained him in April and is held in an Indiana jail where his blood sugar is not consistently monitored, his attorneys told a federal judge, leaving him at risk of organ failure if his Type 2 diabetes goes untreated. When he asked for food that would help stabilize his blood sugar, staff offered him pork rinds, and his requests for halal meals were denied. His lawyers say he is being held on unsupported claims that he poses a foreign policy threat, and they argue he was targeted for speaking out against Israel. The case fits a broader pattern of medical neglect allegations across ICE facilities, and it shows how detention can turn a manageable chronic condition into a life-threatening one when routine care lapses.

• Boone, R. (2026, June 9). Attorneys urge release of mosque leader, saying he’s been denied diabetes care in ICE custody. The Associated Press.

119

The number of days a Georgian man with no criminal record and no alleged immigration violation spent in ICE detention before he died at Winn Correctional Center.

Mamuka Artmeladze, 43, died in ICE custody at Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana on June 4, the 19th death in ICE detention this year and the second at Winn in under two months. Working from Deportation Data Project records, I found that ICE alleged no criminal history and apparently no immigration violation against him. He had been paroled into the country in 2022, was classified at the lowest risk level, and was picked up as a collateral arrest under ICE Wall FY26, an operation that stops commercial truck drivers with the help of state troopers deputized through 287(g). He had a case pending before an immigration judge and no final removal order, so ICE could not have deported him, and at the national average detention rate of $150 a day the government spent roughly $17,850 holding him.

• Kocher, A. (2026, June 8). ICE Reports 19th Death of 2026: Georgian National Mamuka Artmeladze Dies at Winn Correctional. Austin Kocher.

7,750

The number of calls a St. Louis immigration hotline has fielded since January 2025, now visible on a new public dashboard.

The Ashrei Foundation launched an Immigration Data Dashboard that draws on 7,750 hotline calls handled since the St. Louis Rapid Response Hotline began on January 27, 2025, covering 853 distinct contacts from 54 countries of origin. The dashboard exists because federal agencies release little timely local data on enforcement, so a volunteer hotline became one of the few windows into who is being detained in the region, where they are held, and how they entered ICE custody. Many people who end up in ICE custody around St. Louis first encounter local police, which points back to the role local law enforcement plays in funneling people into detention. The project is a good example of the kind of locally grounded data collection that has to fill the gap as the federal government retreats from transparency.

• Hertel, E. (2026, June 10). Introducing the Ashrei Immigration Data Dashboard. Ashrei Foundation.

106 million

The utterly fabricated number of people Gregory Bovino, Trump’s failed Border Patrol chief, says he wants to deport as “illegals.”

Bovino, who recently signaled interest in a 2028 presidential run, said his priority is removing 106 million people he labels illegal immigrants, a figure that would equal nearly a third of the roughly 341 million people living in the United States. The number has no basis in data and may indicate Bovino’s further slide into mental illness and political irrelevance. The Pew Research Center estimated about 14 million undocumented immigrants in 2023, and the Census counts roughly 50 million immigrants in total, about 15 percent of the population, the large majority of them naturalized citizens, green-card holders, or others living here lawfully. Inflating the count by this order of magnitude is Bovino’s “jump the shark” moment.

• Baio, A. (2026, June). Trump’s former border chief wants to deport one-third of all Americans, claiming they are all migrants. The Independent.

4-1

The final score of the United States’ World Cup opener against Paraguay on June 12.

After a week of enforcement numbers, here is one that is just about a game. The United States opened the 2026 World Cup with a 4-1 win over Paraguay in Los Angeles, on two first-half goals from Folarin Balogun, an own goal, and a late strike from Gio Reyna. If the tournament has you curious about the countries on the field, my Relevant Research co-founder Adam Sawyer built Relevant Football, a site that pairs the results with country-level data on economics, energy, geography, and demographics for all 48 competing nations. I talked with Adam about the project and the politics of hosting in a recent conversation. Follow along at relevant-football.com.

• Relevant Football. Relevant Research.

Send me your data points and data tips!

If you have new research, data, or findings related to immigration enforcement and detention that you’d like to see featured here, please reach out. I’m particularly interested right now in ICE detention numbers specifically. Official data releases have become an unreliable guide to what’s actually happening, and if you work in this space and have information you’re able to share, whether on the record or in confidence, DMs are open.

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