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How many legal immigrants has ice detained
Executive summary
Available public reporting and agency data show wide variation in how many people Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds at a given time and in the makeup of that population, but the available sources do not provide a single definitive count of how many legal immigrants ICE has detained historically or cumulatively; they instead report snapshots of overall detainee populations and breakdowns by criminal history or immigration status [1] [2] [3]. Coverage disputes persist: ICE and Department of Homeland Security releases emphasize criminality in arrests, while independent analyses and news outlets highlight large numbers of people with no criminal convictions and include cases of people who were legally present or even U.S. citizens being detained [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. What public statistics show about ICE’s detained population right now
ICE publishes quarterly enforcement and detention statistics and an annual report that provide point-in-time counts and programmatic context, but the agency’s figures are updated with a lag and are presented as snapshots rather than cumulative tallies [1] [8]. Independent reporting and watchdog groups have used ICE and internal DHS numbers to show recent spikes in detention: for example, news outlets and watchdogs reported ICE custody totals ranging from roughly 41,000 earlier in 2025 to record highs above 60,000–66,000 in later months, reflecting rapid operational expansion and new bed capacity [2] [9]. Those figures reflect total detainees, not a straightforward count of “legal immigrants” detained; ICE’s public pages and annual report frame detention as applying to removable noncitizens, including some who are in the United States with lawful status but subject to removal proceedings, but they do not publish an explicit cumulative number for legally present immigrants detained over time [1] [8].
2. How reporting distinguishes criminal history from lawful status
Multiple outlets and analysts have focused on the criminal-justice profile of people in ICE custody because it is central to policy debates. Internal and nonpublic data shared with researchers and commentators indicate a large share of current detainees have no criminal convictions: analyses cited by Cato and CBS found that a substantial portion of detainees had no criminal convictions or violent-conviction histories — for instance, Cato reported that 65% of people taken by ICE lacked convictions and 93% lacked violent convictions in a dataset it examined [5] [2]. The Guardian and CBS used government data to show rising numbers of detainees with no criminal records and to note that people with no criminal records became the largest single group in ICE detention in recent reporting [6] [2]. These data complicate the DHS/ICE framing in which enforcement is presented primarily as targeting criminal illegal aliens [4] [2].
3. Evidence and limits on counts of “legal immigrants” detained
Some reporting documents instances in which people with lawful status — visa holders, lawful permanent residents, and even citizens — were detained or mistakenly arrested, but available sources do not supply a consolidated national total of legally present noncitizens who have been detained by ICE over a specific period [7] [6]. The Vera Institute and Deportation Data Project publish and synthesize datasets that researchers use to reconstruct detention histories and bookings, and Vera reports that over the last decade ICE has booked people roughly 3 million times, which shows the scale of ICE bookings but does not parse how many of those booked were legal immigrants versus undocumented [3] [10]. Available sources do not mention a definitive cumulative count of “legal immigrants” detained by ICE; instead, they offer point-in-time detainee totals, criminal-history breakdowns, and case-level FOIA-derived datasets that require analysis to estimate lawful-status shares [1] [10] [3].
4. Competing narratives and why they matter
Department of Homeland Security messaging has emphasized removals and the role of criminality in ICE’s arrests, with DHS releases claiming large shares of arrests are of criminal aliens [4]. Independent analysts, journalists, and civil-rights organizations have countered with data showing that a large and growing portion of ICE detainees either lack criminal convictions or had no violent convictions and that ICE operations have included collateral arrests and the detention of people legally present in the U.S. or even U.S. citizens in some documented cases [5] [6] [7]. Both narratives rely on different slices of the available datasets: DHS cites enforcement tallies and removals, while researchers mine FOIA data, internal ICE logs, and court records to quantify bookings, transfers, and case outcomes [4] [10] [9].
5. What a careful answer would require
To answer “how many legal immigrants has ICE detained” with precision would require harmonizing ICE’s point-in-time detention reports, DHS removals data, FOIA datasets that link arrests and bookings, and immigration-court case records that record lawful status at the time of arrest or booking — an exercise researchers have started but which no single public source in the provided set completes [1] [10] [3]. For now, the evidence in public reporting shows large and increasing detention populations, a substantial share without criminal convictions, and documented individual cases of lawful residents and citizens being detained — but no single source here supplies a definitive cumulative count of legally present immigrants detained by ICE [2] [5] [7] [3].