What datasets does DHS publish that could verify per‑operation officer counts and arrests?
Executive summary
The Department of Homeland Security publishes multiple statistical products that report arrests, encounters, removals and related enforcement totals—principally through the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) and component pages such as ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations—but none of the cited DHS sources present a clear, published dataset that lists "per‑operation" officer staffing counts alongside arrests for each named operation (OHSS; ICE) [1] [2] [3]. Researchers seeking to verify claims about how many officers were present during a particular enforcement action will therefore find authoritative arrest and encounter counts, geographic and temporal breakdowns, and component-level staffing snapshots, but not an official per‑operation roster or officer‑by‑operation log in the sources provided [4] [5].
1. Where DHS publishes enforcement counts: OHSS monthly tables and annual flow reports
The Office of Homeland Security Statistics is the primary DHS clearinghouse for immigration and enforcement statistics and publishes monthly immigration enforcement tables with encounters, arrests, book‑ins/book‑outs, detention, removals and returns that are maintained as the OHSS “Persist Dataset” of record [1] [6]. OHSS also assembles Annual Flow Reports that synthesize CBP and ICE case records into fiscal‑year counts and characteristics of people found inadmissible, apprehended, arrested, detained, returned or removed, making OHSS the central place to get authoritative counts of arrests and removals over time [2].
2. ICE’s public Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) statistics
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement publishes ERO arrest and removal statistics that break down arrests by Area of Responsibility (field office), by citizenship and by categories of criminal history; ICE’s statistics page confirms the integrity of the published aggregates and frames ERO as the component that manages identification, arrest, detention and removal in the interior [3]. These ICE datasets are useful to verify how many arrests a field office reported in a given period, and to triangulate OHSS aggregates back to the responsible component [3].
3. DHS-wide data access points: DHS Data and Data.gov
DHS directs users to centralized datasets and machine‑readable files via its DHS Data landing page and the DHS section of Data.gov, noting an Open Data goal to release high‑value datasets and to follow digital government principles; component datasets and statistical reports are made available there when published [4]. Researchers should therefore expect to find OHSS tables, component statistics and related machine‑readable files accessible through DHS’s data portal and Data.gov as the main distribution channels [4].
4. Complementary federal law‑enforcement datasets that can help contextualize counts
Beyond DHS, the Uniform Crime Reporting Program and Bureau of Justice Statistics collect law‑enforcement staffing, arrests and related metrics at the federal and local level; the FBI/UCR and BJS products (including federal law‑enforcement officer censuses) provide complementary national snapshots of officer counts and arrest activity that can be combined with DHS enforcement counts for broader context [7] [8] [9]. Those programs are separate from OHSS and DHS components and may follow different review and reporting processes, so crosswalks are necessary when comparing figures [7].
5. What the published datasets do and do not contain — key limitations
OHSS and ICE make clear that their public tables count encounters and arrests (sometimes counting repeat contacts multiple times) and withhold certain data to protect confidentiality; OHSS documents data disclosure policies and glossary terms and emphasizes that some microdata are withheld when they could be linked to individuals, indicating deliberate aggregation and suppression choices [1] [5]. None of the cited DHS pages present a published dataset that lists per‑operation officer attendance or staffing rosters tied to an individual enforcement action; published ICE and OHSS products instead report aggregate arrests by office, time period and statutory categories rather than per‑raid officer counts [3] [1].
6. Practical path to verification given available DHS data
Given the available DHS products, verification of a per‑operation officer count must proceed by triangulation: use OHSS monthly/annual tables and ICE ERO arrest breakdowns for counts and timing, consult DHS’s Data/Data.gov catalogs for machine‑readable files, and use cross‑agency staffing reports (e.g., federal officer censuses from BJS or UCR summaries) to estimate component staffing capacity—recognizing that none of the cited DHS sources publish a direct officer‑per‑operation dataset and that confidentiality and aggregation policies limit microdata disclosure [4] [1] [5] [3].