Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released new detention data today that objectively confirms widespread reports that ICE’s enforcement surge has largely targeted immigrants without criminal convictions or criminal charges, contrary to the Trump administration’s baseless public assertions. The data is clear on this point. Allow me to explain.

A note about the data: ICE’s detention data reflects the total detained population on a single day. It does not reflect the total number of people detained and released, nor does it represent the total number of people arrested but not booked into a detention facility. It is what we refer to as “snapshot” data; it is more like a photograph that captures a single point in time, not a video that captures total movement of people through the system. Despite its weaknesses, this data represents the best data we have right now that is not filtered (as far as my validation reveals) through ICE’s misleading social media campaign.

As of February 9, ICE’s total detained population reached 41,169. ICE’s total detained population is now higher than at any point in the Biden administration and the first time since the pandemic that ICE’s detention numbers have crossed 40,000.

This growth is due entirely to people detained by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) rather than by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The number of people booked in by CBP declined by 2,491, while the number booked in by ICE increased 4,422. It was the largest single bi-weekly increase in people detained by ICE since at early 2021. The graph below shows the change in total detention numbers resulting from ICE enforcement only compared to the previous publication of detention data. The combination of CBP’s decrease and ICE’s increase resulted in a total increase of 1,931 people in detention compared to a month ago.

These data confirm a simple yet consequential reality: interior enforcement is back. But where is ICE focusing its surge of enforcement? Agency officials have claimed repeatedly that they are focusing on high-priority criminals, a message that ICE’s social media feed reinforces with a stream of memes of alleged criminals that ICE has arrested. Are they right?

Let’s set the stage by reviewing my recent predictions leading up to our analysis of this detention data. Over the past few weeks, I have warned of the dangers of misrepresenting this enforcement surge by confronting ICE’s problematic social media posts online, reviewing the available data on detention and deportation, providing a baseline for evaluating the Trump administration, highlighting the contradiction in messaging versus reality at the Guantánamo Migration Operations Center. Here’s what I said on February 3 about what we know from the immigration data:

“The data shows that any major expansion of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration would require a significant rise in arrests, detentions, and deportations of people with no criminal background. This isn’t a policy argument, or a moral argument, this is simply the reality born out in the data about who will be affected by an increase in immigration enforcement across the country over the next four years. In the coming months and years, the absolute number of immigrants with serious or any criminal convictions who are arrested, detained, and deported is expected to remain stable or increase—although probably not dramatically. However, as a share of total immigration enforcement, this group will almost certainly decline.”

And here’s what I said back on January 24:

“Let me make a prediction that you can hold me to. As detention numbers increase, the percentage of people in detention in the category “Other Immigration Violator” is going to steadily increase, as well. This is one of the contradictions of Trump’s conflation of dangerous criminality and immigrants. We know this through years of observation and data analysis: there simply are not enough immigrants in the country with criminal convictions to enable the Trump administration to massively grow detention and deportation alone. They will have to go after a growing number of immigrants with no criminal histories.”

Making bold predictions involves a risk. If I was wrong, the data itself would hold me accountable and I would be forced to correct the mistakes in my framework and adjust my analysis. Fortunately, no such corrections or adjustments need made (for now). Let’s see why the data supports my predictions.

I won’t repeat my longer analysis of ICE’s data on criminal histories here. Instead, let’s just focus on the recent month of data. This means comparing the last of ICE’s detention data releases that wholly represented the period under the Biden administration for January 12 and today’s data that was current on February 9. We’ll add an extra prior data point from the end of December and the one from the end of January just to make sure there aren’t any other major differences. Let’s also restrict ourselves to detentions resulting from ICE’s enforcement activity since, as we saw above, that’s where all of the growth has occurred.

The table below (available on Datawrapper here) clearly shows that the increase in ICE enforcement has come primarily, although by no means exclusively, from a focus on immigrants with no criminal histories.

Immigrants with criminal convictions made up the largest group of people in detention at the start of the Trump administration, in no small part due to the laws around how ICE is required to detain as well as the priorities of the Biden administration. The number of those individuals did go up, from about 9,300 to about 10,500. The total number of people detained with pending criminal charges also increased. But the largest objective growth in people detained came from immigrants with no other criminal histories. This group increased by almost 2,000 in about two weeks. This group also grew proportionally from 6 percent to 14 percent of all people detained.

To be clear: this is not the story that the Trump administration is telling. DHS and ICE continue to represent their enforcement as if it were focused on high-priority immigrants that would, according to their logic, fall under the first category of “convicted criminals”. This claim is simply not true, based on this data. Yes, that group is also growing in total numbers, and yes, you can be deported without a criminal conviction—I’m not ignoring those facts. But that’s not what the administration is saying. They are saying that they are focused on serious criminals and their own data directly, unambiguously, factually, objectively, indisputably contradicts that claim. Period.

Visualizing this might help emphasize the point. If we compare the growth from each of these three groups relative to their starting point on January 12, we find that detained immigrants in ICE’s “convicted criminal” category have actually seen the lowest relative growth compare to the other two categories.

I want to flag an important caveat. Be careful not interpret this growth of 1.2x as generalizable to the entire population of immigrants arrested in the past few weeks. Remember that immigrants with serious criminal convictions are more likely to be detained than immigrants with no criminal convictions. Therefore, the total population of immigrants not detained are likely to reflect even less of a proportional increase for people arrested with criminal convictions. In other words, the total relative growth of immigrants arrested with criminal convictions is likely to be less than 1.2x while the total relative growth of immigrants arrested with no criminal convictions is likely to be more than 3.2x. Validating that claim will require data about ICE enforcement efforts, including detailed data about arrests and detentions.

Hopefully this sets the record straight and helps to demonstrate why I was so confident about my public claims over the past two weeks. As I’ve said, I’m not taking a moral or political position here about who is detained or why. I’m simply highlighting the fairly predictable trend in immigration data and contrasting that with unsubstantiated claims from the current administration. This is a key part of my work that I’ve done consistently across Democratic and Republican administrations.

I will continue to write about immigration data to help us all understand the reality behind the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. Data alone doesn’t decide what values to hold or what your political beliefs should be. But data is a powerful guardrail against misinformation and an important check on our assumptions and on media narratives that are designed to fuel division and play into our fears rather than keep us tethered to reality.

There are still many people who refuse to accept these facts or will find some way to explain them away. But I truly believe that there are a lot of people who have simply never had the opportunity to look at the data for themselves with someone who understand the data to walk them through it. That’s what I am passionate about and it’s what I try to do with this newsletter Please help me continue to do this work by sharing this post widely.

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