How many federal lawsuits were filed against ICE each year from 2021 to 2025?

1. No single dataset in these sources answers the question

The documents and news items in the search results report individual suits and litigation trackers, but none present a year-by-year numeric count of federal lawsuits filed against ICE for 2021–2025. The Justice Action Center litigation tracker lists many cases and archived entries through 2025 but the page excerpts do not provide an annual aggregate or summary table to answer the numeric question directly ^[1]. Therefore, a simple numeric time series is not available in the provided material (available sources do not mention a year-by-year count).

2. What the sources do document: types of suits that rose sharply in 2024–2025

The supplied items show a surge of high-profile federal litigation in 2025 alleging inhumane detention conditions, unlawful courthouse arrests, wrongful deportations of U.S. citizens, and excessive-force or due-process claims — for example, a federal class-action over conditions at a California ICE facility and multiple suits seeking to stop ICE arrests at immigration courts (The Guardian; OPB) ^{[2] [3]}. Advocacy groups and civil-rights organizations also filed FTCA and civil-rights complaints in 2025, such as MALDEF’s FTCA claim and the National Immigration Project’s J.L.V. v. Acuna suit concerning family deportations ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Who’s bringing the cases and why that matters for counts

The plaintiffs include detained individuals, advocacy organizations, state attorneys general, immigrant-rights groups, and private parties asserting FTCA or Bivens-style claims — a heterogeneity that complicates any attempt to tally “lawsuits against ICE.” Some suits name ICE as an agency or ICE officials specifically; others name the Department of Homeland Security or individual officers; still others are FTCA claims that begin with administrative notices rather than immediate federal filings ^{[6] [4] [7]}. The litigation tracker excerpt underscores that cases arise from varied legal theories and plaintiffs, so a reliable annual count requires standardized inclusion criteria ^[1].

4. Conflicting framings and political context in the sources

Different sources frame litigation differently. Government statements characterize some suits as “baseless lawfare” (DHS on an ACLU-supported case) while advocacy groups describe the same patterns as systemic constitutional violations ^{[8] [9]}. Media coverage highlights both public-interest class actions over detention conditions and local governments or entities suing ICE over financial liability or contracts (Chicago Tribune) ^[10]. Any count that treats all “lawsuits against ICE” as equivalent would obscure these varying motives and legal bases.

5. Practical steps to produce the requested yearly counts

To answer the numeric question with confidence, a researcher must (a) define inclusion rules (e.g., federal district-court filings that list ICE or ICE officials as defendants; FTCA administrative claims filed that later ripen into federal suits; whether suits naming DHS count), (b) run a court-record search (PACER or a litigation dataset) for each calendar year 2021–2025 using those criteria, and (c) reconcile duplicative filings and multi-district or consolidated cases. The current sources include a litigation tracker and many individual case reports that would be inputs to such a project but do not replace a court-records search ^{[1] [6]}.

6. Alternative sources and likely limitations

The Justice Action Center’s Immigration Litigation Tracker and advocacy organizations’ press pages are the best starting points cited here, but both are partial and oriented to specific kinds of cases ^{[1] [6]}. Government releases (e.g., DHS press statements) reflect an agency perspective and may omit or downplay volumes of filings ^[8]. Any final numeric tally should disclose inclusion choices and acknowledge that some FTCA claims never become public federal complaints.

7. Bottom line for your original query

Based on the provided materials, I cannot supply a year-by-year count for federal lawsuits filed against ICE in 2021–2025 because the sources do not contain that aggregated data. The documents do, however, portray a marked wave of litigation in 2024–2025 on detention conditions, courthouse arrests, deportations of U.S. citizens, and civil‑rights claims — evidence that compiling an accurate annual count will require targeted PACER/database queries and clear inclusion rules beyond what these excerpts provide ^{[2] [3] [5]}.