ICE detentions hit record highs as Trump crackdown widens

ICE detention set a monthly record high in July, with arrests averaging more than 1,400 a day in the first 12 days of the month. More than 43,000 people were booked into immigration detention in June, the highest monthly total since Donald Trump returned to office.

An ICE snapshot put the detainee count at 59,000, with nearly half of those people having no criminal record. By early November 2025, the population had reached 66,000, and it later climbed to 73,000. Less than 14% of immigrants arrested by ICE last year had violent criminal records, and in the Chicago area only 16 of more than 600 detained people had criminal histories.

ICE facilities were operating at 109% capacity on one Tuesday morning during the surge, and a separate accounting put detention levels above 140% capacity. Vera Institute data showed ICE detained people in 436 facilities during the first 10 days of June 2025, but publicly acknowledged only 163 facilities, leaving 273 sites outside its public inventory. More than a dozen detention facilities have also gone over a year without inspection under revised ICE policies.

During the first nine months of Trump’s second administration, deportations from within the United States rose by a factor of 4.6 and ICE arrests quadrupled, the Deportation Data Project found. TRAC Immigration counted 39,703 adults in ICE custody on January 12, 2025, across more than 100 facilities, compared with 14,195 adults at the end of Trump’s first term. The Migration Policy Institute’s analysis puts immigrant detention at historic highs in Trump’s second term, driven by record funding and private prison expansion.

A federal appeals court in Colorado found unlawful an ICE guidance issued in July 2025 that denied bond to all detainees who entered the country illegally. The crackdown has spread well beyond the border, into detention centers and local jails in places including Texas, Louisiana, California, Georgia, Florida, El Paso, Lumpkin, Natchez, Pearsall and Adelanto.