Fact check: How many students have been detained by ICE at US schools since 2020?

1. What the original claims said and what they implied — small numbers vs. systemic patterns

The original materials contain discrete claims about students and school‑site detentions but do not establish a single national total. News articles recount specific detentions, deportations and a teacher’s arrest, noting at least five children and teens deported alongside parents and at least five K–12 student arrests documented in New York City, but they stop short of offering a comprehensive nationwide tally since 2020 ^{[1] [4] [5]}. Those reports emphasize individual human impacts and localized fear in school communities, which can imply a broader pattern without providing a verified aggregate number, leaving a gap between anecdotal evidence and a national statistic.

2. What federal enforcement datasets actually show — comprehensive numbers, poor granularity

Federal and oversight reports provide useful context on overall enforcement but do not identify detentions that took place on school premises or isolate students from broader detainee counts. ICE reporting on nonimmigrant students establishes the presence of large populations of F‑1 and M‑1 students (1.52 million SEVIS records in 2019), but it does not track enforcement actions against K–12 or other students on school property ^[6]. GAO and DHS analyses document arrests, detentions and removals across years and flag weaknesses in ICE’s public reporting that cause understating of total detained populations, reinforcing that available federal numbers cannot be used to derive a school‑site student detention total ^{[2] [7]}.

3. Reported tallies and contested figures — from a few documented arrests to thousands affected

Advocacy and complaint letters and some investigations produce higher counts that require careful interpretation. One letter to federal officials cites “close to 2,000 children arrested by ICE” between January 20 and July 31 in a period referenced, and identifies at least five K–12 student arrests in New York City, yet these figures are not tied to verified, nationwide ICE incident logs showing time/place and victim age for each detention ^[3]. News outlets corroborate several deportations and teacher detentions, but these remain case-level evidence rather than an authoritative cumulative measure of school‑site student detentions since 2020 ^{[1] [5]}.

4. Broader academic and policy research — indirect harms and enrollment shifts complicate interpretation

Researchers document substantial indirect impacts on attendance and enrollment tied to enforcement activity that complicate attempts to count “students detained.” Studies show attendance drops and enrollment declines—one analysis links local raids to a 22% increase in student absences and another finds overall attendance declines and significant enrollment losses for Hispanic and elementary students where enforcement partnerships are active. These findings imply a larger footprint of enforcement on school populations than case reports alone indicate, but they do not translate directly into a headcount of students physically detained on school grounds ^{[8] [9]}. The research demonstrates systemic disruption even where direct detention tallies are incomplete.

5. Bottom line, transparency gaps, and what would be needed to answer the question definitively

There is no verifiable national figure available in the cited reporting and government analyses for how many students ICE has detained at U.S. schools since 2020. Existing sources document individual detentions, localized clusters, and wide indirect impacts on attendance and enrollment, and federal reviews note ICE’s public data understates detained populations — together indicating that any definitive total would require new, disaggregated data from ICE or DHS specifying location, age, and school‑site status for each detention ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Policymakers, researchers, and journalists seeking a definitive answer should press for that disaggregated operational reporting or for an independent audit of school‑site enforcement incidents.