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.
17,500
The U.S. refugee admissions cap, narrowed to whites-only, against a world of 117.8 million displaced people.
World Refugee Day is today, June 20. The United Nations refugee agency reported that 117.8 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2025, the first annual decline in a decade. Kelsey Norman writes that the drop comes as refugee funding collapses, with U.S. State Department refugee assistance falling from $4.6 billion in fiscal 2024 to $3.2 billion the next year, and the UN agency cutting roughly a quarter of its global staff. Against that backdrop, the United States has frozen most refugee admissions while raising its annual cap to 17,500 largely to admit white South Africans, more than 6,000 of whom have been resettled since last year.
Norman, K. (2026, June 18). Refugee numbers dropped in 2025, but aid cuts and other trends suggest little to celebrate. The Conversation.
Peyton, N., & Alexander, E. (2026, June 2). South African politician seeks asylum in US as critics call his claims ‘fantasy’. The Independent.
World Refugee Day
The United Nations established World Refugee Day on June 20 to honor people forced to flee war, persecution, and disaster, and to recommit the world to protecting them. It carries extra weight this year given growing animosity of counties in the Global North to refugees—a sentiment that is not always reflected in the goodness of citizens of these countries who often endeavor to welcome the stranger. If you want to mark the day by doing something concrete, these organizations below are just a few work directly with refugees and asylum seekers and can use the support:
International Rescue Committee resettles refugees in U.S. communities and runs humanitarian programs in crisis zones around the world.
HIAS provides legal aid, resettlement, and protection for refugees and asylum seekers of every faith and background.
Church World Service is one of the national agencies that welcomes and resettles refugees here at home, work that has been hit hard by the admissions freeze.
Refugees International advocates for displaced people worldwide and takes no government funding, which keeps its reporting independent.
International Refugee Assistance Project provides free legal representation to refugees and displaced people navigating an increasingly hostile system.
Global Refuge is the largest faith-based nonprofit dedicated to resettling refugees and supporting immigrants in the United States, formerly known as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
If you would like to highlight a refugee-serving organization, please do so in the comments.
$240,000,000,000
The amount of money Congress has handed to Stephen Miller for his nativist anti-immigrant agenda and a data point behind Heidi Altman’s case to stop funding ICE.
In my conversation with Heidi Altman of the National Immigration Law Center this week, she put the cumulative commitment to immigration enforcement at roughly $240 billion. The $70 billion ICE and Border Patrol package President Trump signed into law on June 10 sits on top of years of prior spending to reach that total. Altman argued it is time to retire the bargain that any protection for immigrant communities has to be purchased with more enforcement and surveillance.
Kocher, A. (2026, June 17). “Do Not Give One More Dollar to ICE”: Heidi Altman on the Latest $70B Enforcement Bill. Substack.
$10,000
The immigration bond a person might face today, more than three times what a comparable case drew a decade ago.
Marie Celentino, who directs the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, told the Detroit Free Press that a person who might have received a $3,000 bond a decade ago would now be looking at around $10,000. She was speaking about Karliana Perdomo, a college senior and legal resident detained by ICE, whose Cleary University soccer team launched a fundraiser on June 16 to cover roughly $20,000 in bond and legal costs. Bond determines whether a detained person can fight a case from home or from inside a detention center while it is decided.
Boucher, David. (2026, June 17). Michigan soccer team raising money to help member detained by ICE. Detroit Free Press.
21
The number of months a green card holder spent in ICE detention without a bond hearing, in a case the Supreme Court just agreed to review.
The Supreme Court agreed on June 15 to hear the case of Keisy G.M., a lawful permanent resident from the Dominican Republic whom immigration officials detained in October 2020 after an assault conviction and then held for 21 months while they pursued his deportation. Amy Howe reports that in 2024 the Second Circuit ruled his detention had become “unreasonably prolonged” and required a bond hearing where the government must justify continued custody by clear and convincing evidence. G.M. was released under a separate court order, but his challenge continued, and the justices will now decide whether noncitizens facing prolonged detention are entitled to such a hearing.
Howe, A. (2026, June 15). Court agrees to hear three new cases, including on the constitutionality of six-person juries. SCOTUSblog.
$1
The $1-a-day wage floor ICE will no longer require private contractors to pay detained people for their labor.
New ICE rules posted on June 15 drop the requirement that private detention contractors pay detained immigrants at least $1 a day for work performed inside, and also release those companies from following state and local laws. Bruce Golding, citing reporting by The Washington Post, writes that the change came after The Geo Group, ICE’s largest contractor, was sued in three states for allegedly violating minimum wage laws. Detained people often cook, clean, and run the laundries that keep these facilities operating, sometimes for a dollar a day and sometimes for nothing.
Golding, B. (2026, June 16). At contractor’s request, ICE ends pay requirement for migrants who work in detention. The Independent.
93%
The share of asylum claims Baltimore’s immigration judges denied in March, the highest rate in that court’s recorded history.
Daniel Zawodny reports that Baltimore immigration judges denied 93 percent of asylum claims in March, the most recent month with data and the highest denial rate in the court’s recorded history, according to TRAC. The spike coincides with “mega master” calendar hearings that place dozens of cases on a single judge’s docket at once. Advocates told the Baltimore Banner that the pace leaves little room to present a claim before a decision.
Zawodny, D. (2026, June 10). Mass deportation hearings in Baltimore raise due process concerns. The Baltimore Banner.
$102
The new annual fee asylum seekers must pay just to keep an application alive, the first charge of its kind.
A Department of Homeland Security rule that took effect on May 29 created the first-ever annual fee for asylum seekers, who now owe $102 every year to keep a pending application active. A Los Angeles Times contributor writes that the fee arrives alongside a separate change barring asylum seekers from applying for a work permit until a full year after they file. Immigration courts carry a backlog of more than 3.3 million cases, including over 2.3 million people waiting on asylum claims.
Feldman, Tess. Los Angeles Times. (2026, June 10). New rules squeeze money from asylum seekers while preventing them from working. Los Angeles Times.
3%
The share of people detained by ICE over the past year who had a violent felony conviction.
An ABC News analysis of government data found that of the 438,537 people ICE detained between January 20, 2025 and March 11, 2026, only 13,018, about 3 percent, had a violent felony conviction. That leaves more than 400,000 people detained over the period with no violent criminal history, a group that includes the parents and spouses of U.S. citizens. Maggie Green reports that the share runs against President Trump’s pledge to prioritize “the worst of the worst,” and that detention reached record levels across the same fourteen months.
Green, M. (2026, June 12). Just 3% of recent ICE detainees had a violent felony conviction, government data shows. ABC News.
20
The 20 years a veteran spent in uniform, even as ICE moves to deport his wife.
Retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo, who served roughly 20 years across the U.S. Army and the Texas National Guard, is asking immigration officials to release his wife, Arelys Barahona Martinez, who faces deportation to Honduras. Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports that Trujillo, 45, enlisted in the late 1990s and built his military career while the couple raised their family in the United States.
Montoya-Galvez, C. (2026, June 13). “It rips my heart apart”: U.S. military veteran calls on ICE to release wife. CBS News.
Learn more about how our immigration system harms veterans:
~24
The number of people the U.S. deported on a single flight to the Central African Republic, among them refugees who had won court protection.
The Trump administration deported nearly two dozen people to the Central African Republic, a country the State Department warns Americans not to visit “for any reason,” in what advocates describe as a new third-country destination for U.S. removals. Common Dreams reports that the group included several refugees who had fled persecution elsewhere and held court orders barring their return to danger. The flight is part of the administration’s growing use of third countries to deport people whom courts have blocked it from sending home.
Prager, Stephen. (2026, June 12). Despite Court Protection Orders, Trump Admin Deports Refugees to War-Torn Central African Republic, Putting ‘Lives at Risk’. Common Dreams.
1990
The year Congress created Temporary Protected Status, the program the administration is now trying to end for hundreds of thousands of people.
Congress enacted Temporary Protected Status in 1990, giving the Department of Homeland Security authority to let nationals of countries in crisis live and work in the United States until it is safe to return. Amy Howe reports that Haitian TPS holders have asked the Supreme Court to throw out the dispute over the administration’s move to end their protection, arguing that then-Secretary Kristi Noem’s July 1 notice terminating the program relied on “a knowingly false statement.” More than 350,000 Haitians could lose status depending on how the Court rules.
Howe, A. (2026, June 16). Haitian citizens ask justices to throw out dispute over whether Trump administration properly ended protected status for them. SCOTUSblog.
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, I’d welcome the conversation.
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"...Sometimes for a dollar a day and sometimes for nothing."
I think I've finally figured out why we're locking up so many innocent immigrants--slave labor. That's all it is essentially. American capitalists are tired of paying even the paltry minimum wage, and they certainly don't like wasting money providing private health insurance for their workers. But if you lock up everyone you can get your hands on and get them to work for next to nothing or nothing at all... Capitalists' profits soar!