Does DHS or ICE publish regional or field office staffing levels that could be compiled into a state-by-state count?

1. What the agencies do publish: aggregate totals and program tallies

DHS and ICE make broad staffing numbers and component-specific headcounts public: ICE and DHS press releases tout the agency’s recruitment drive and total hires (DHS reported more than 12,000 new ICE officers and agents in under a year) and ICE career pages list component totals such as HSI’s thousands of employees and special agents assigned to hundreds of domestic offices ^{[2] [4] [1]}. Those figures are useful for understanding scale—how many people work for ICE, HSI, or OPLA overall—but they are published as national or program-level totals rather than as granular office-by-office personnel lists ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What is available for mapping offices — but not precise staffing counts

DHS publishes regional contact sheets and lists of field offices that identify where DHS and ICE have a physical presence and which office handles a region, which helps map footprint by city or region (DHS regional contact sheets and OSLLE materials list field offices and SAC offices) ^{[3] [5]}. Those documents sometimes describe “staffing presence” in qualitative terms for liaison purposes, yet they do not provide the numeric breakdown—how many deportation officers, special agents, analysts, or support staff sit in a given city or state—necessary for a clean state-by-state headcount ^{[3] [5]}.

3. Journalistic and watchdog reporting: estimates, anecdotes, and regional strain

Recent reporting fills some gaps with estimates and reportage about rapid hiring and local capacity strains—stories that regional offices face shortages of desks, armor, and parking as staffing surges—but these are anecdotal or based on internal sourcing and do not equate to an official published roster that can be compiled into a verified state-by-state tally (The Atlantic on regional office strain; Government Executive on hiring tempo) ^{[6] [4]}. The media accounts are valuable for context but inconsistent in methodology and often rely on agency statements or anonymous insiders rather than standardized per-office figures ^{[6] [7]}.

4. Why a state-by-state count is not straightforward from public sources

Three practical obstacles block a neat conversion of public data into a state-by-state count: first, aggregate numbers are not disaggregated by office in DHS/ICE public releases (agencywide hires and program totals are given, but not office-level assignments) ^{[2] [1]}. Second, some components operate nationally and internationally with offices that cross state lines or serve multistate regions, complicating attribution to a single state (HSI’s domestic offices and SAC structure are regionalized) ^{[1] [5]}. Third, rapid hiring and internal reassignments during the recent recruitment surge mean public tallies may lag operational assignments, and reporting shows deployment decisions and training timelines shifted to meet demand ^{[4] [6]}.

5. Alternatives and next steps for researchers seeking a state breakdown

A practical path for anyone determined to build a state-by-state estimate is to combine DHS/ICE office directories and regional contact sheets with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests or targeted queries to DHS regional public affairs or law enforcement liaison offices asking for current staffing numbers per office; the public materials identify the offices to contact but do not themselves contain the numeric data ^{[3] [5]}. Journalistic and watchdog sources may provide supplemental estimates or leaked figures, but those should be treated as unverified unless matched to official records ^{[6] [4]}.