How many people have been wrongly detained by ICE since it began?
Executive summary
There is no authoritative count of how many people have been “wrongly detained” by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since the agency’s creation, because ICE’s public data do not track a definitive category called “wrongful detentions,” historical records are inconsistent, and independent studies cover only slices of time and facilities [1] [2]. Available reporting and analyses show repeated patterns of mistaken or legally contestable detentions — including U.S. citizens wrongly held, large shares of detainees without criminal convictions, and wide year-to-year shifts in who is detained — but they cannot be summed into a single, reliable total [3] [4] [5].
1. Why the question can’t be answered with a single number
ICE’s official statistics publish arrests, detentions and removals but do not provide a simple, validated tally of “wrongful” detentions across the agency’s entire history; the agency itself warns its public statistics fluctuate until fiscal-year “lock” and does not certify subsequent transmissions [1]. Independent trackers such as TRAC and the Deportation Data Project compile and analyze ICE releases but focus on detention populations, arrests and demographics rather than adjudicated wrongful-detention findings, and they repeatedly flag inconsistencies across ICE datasets that make retrospective totals unreliable [6] [2] [7].
2. Measured examples of wrongful or legally dubious detentions
Researchers and advocates have documented concrete instances and estimates showing ICE has detained people who should not have been held: a scholarly review of two detention centers from 2006–2008 found about one percent of people in immigration detention were U.S. citizens — a glaring form of wrongful detention in those sampled facilities [3]. Multiple nonprofit reports and academic analyses show that large fractions of people detained had no criminal conviction or even no criminal charge — a policy-driven category distinct from “wrongful” but often central to legal and rights-based challenges to detention practices [4] [3] [5].
3. Scale of detention and why error matters
Detention networks have expanded dramatically at various points, producing far larger populations in which mistakes and legal errors can occur; for example, reporting documented single-day detained populations rising from roughly 40,000 to 73,000 in a single year under a particular policy surge and later daily totals above 59,000–70,000 in 2025–2026 snapshots, creating more opportunities for misidentification or procedural errors [5] [8] [9]. Independent analyses of recent surges show most of the numerical growth in detentions was driven by people without criminal convictions — a shift that correlates with increased legal vulnerability and contested detention decisions but does not directly quantify proven wrongful detentions [10] [4].
4. Conflicting interpretations and agency posture
Advocates and civil‑rights groups frame large numbers of non‑convicted detainees and documented citizen misdetentions as evidence of widespread wrongful detention and lack of accountability, urging stricter oversight and data transparency [5] [11]. ICE, for its part, publishes enforcement and custody-management data asserting data integrity while warning about fluctuations and offering context about mandatory detention categories and medical and custody oversight, which complicates simple conclusions about wrongdoing versus lawful but controversial enforcement choices [1].
5. Best attainable answer and what’s needed
The best, defensible answer: no reliable, agency‑wide total exists in the public record for “how many people have been wrongly detained by ICE since it began.” Existing evidence documents instances and identifiable patterns — e.g., localized studies finding citizen detentions and large shares of detainees without convictions — but these cannot be extrapolated into a validated cumulative number without comprehensive, standardized records and transparent audits [3] [4] [2]. To produce a credible total would require ICE to publish case‑level disposition data tied to final legal findings about wrongful detention and for independent auditors to reconcile inconsistencies across years and facilities [1] [7].