Has ICE detained any tourists?

1. A documented tourist case that made local headlines

Reporters in New England followed the case of a Bulgarian man who crossed from Canada too close to the Vermont border and was held by ICE for nearly three months, an account that describes him as a tourist who experienced shackling, long transfers between facilities, poor conditions and gaps in public information such as disappearance from the ICE detainee locator ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Airport encounters and arrests expand the risk to travelers

Public‑interest groups and local reporting document arrests occurring at airports and through information‑sharing between TSA and ICE, with community alerts warning that travelers — even those with valid visas or ESTA — can face detention if flagged, and citing specific incidents like arrests at Boston Logan Airport as part of a broader increase in airport enforcement ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Systemic expansion makes incidental detentions more likely

National analyses and advocacy reporting show a rapid and large expansion of ICE detention capacity and activity in 2025–2026, with single‑day detained populations rising from roughly 40,000 to roughly 69,000 and reports that much of the growth comes from people without criminal convictions — a dataset and interpretation compiled by independent trackers and summarized by advocacy groups — which raises the statistical chance that non‑criminals, including tourists, will be detained in interior enforcement sweeps ^{[4] [7] [8] [9]}.

4. Accountability gaps and reporting problems compound uncertainty

Investigations and watchdog reporting warn that oversight has eroded as detention expands, citing unreliable detainee‑locator listings, transfers that obscure detainee locations, and rising deaths in custody, all of which make it harder to quantify exactly how many detained people were tourists and to verify circumstances around individual detentions ^{[4] [10] [7]}.

5. Conflicting frames: enforcement agencies vs. advocates

ICE’s public posture emphasizes legal authority to detain individuals who are subject to removal, custody determinations and compliance with detention standards, and the agency points to oversight mechanisms in its detention management descriptions ^[11]. Civil‑liberties groups and independent trackers counter that policy shifts, increased funding and aggressive interior tactics — “at‑large” arrests, roving patrols, worksite raids and re‑arrests — have driven a surge in detentions of people with no criminal records and of lawful residents and travelers, implying a broader net that can capture tourists ^{[3] [4] [8]}.

6. What the reporting does — and does not — prove

The available reporting proves that at least some tourists have been detained (the Bulgarian case reported by New Hampshire and Vermont Public radio) and that airport arrests and interior enforcement have increased ^{[1] [2] [5]}. The sources do not supply a definitive national tally of “tourists detained” or a systematic breakdown by immigration status versus reason for arrest; independent databases and advocacy analyses document growth among people without convictions but do not label all of those people as tourists, so a precise count or percentage is not supported by these sources ^{[8] [9] [10]}.

7. Bottom line and practical implications

In short: yes — documented instances show ICE has detained tourists, and structural changes in enforcement and detention capacity documented by advocacy groups and data trackers make such detentions more plausible and perhaps more frequent; however, major data gaps and inconsistent public tracking mean the exact scope of tourist detentions nationwide cannot be determined from the cited reporting alone ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [10]}.