What reports or datasets track ICE detentions by immigration status (2020–2024)?

1. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations dashboards and year‑end detention statistics — the official starting point

ICE publishes dashboards and annual FY detention spreadsheets that report arrests, detentions, removals and alternatives to detention through December 31, 2024, and these dashboards are presented as the agency’s authoritative enforcement‑and‑detention time series for 2020–2024 ^{[1] [2]}.

2. DHS OHSS Persist dataset and monthly tables — the agency “system of record” with book‑in/book‑out detail

DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics constructs the Persist dataset from operational reports and issues monthly tables (including ICE ERO book‑ins and book‑outs by citizenship, criminality, and initial arresting agency) that are explicitly described as the immigration statistical system of record and routinely updated; these tables are the best source for generating cross‑cutting tabulations of detentions by citizenship and arresting agency for 2020–2024 ^{[3] [8]}.

3. Deportation Data Project, TRAC and other independent compilations — FOIA, reformatting and longer series

Independent projects repackage ICE and DHS releases and add FOIA‑obtained fields: the Deportation Data Project hosts ICE enforcement files and longer time series and includes the original ICE records for researchers, while TRAC provides independent, queryable detention tables and visualizations useful for tracking trends by immigration status and facility over time ^{[4] [5]}.

4. Policy research and watchdog syntheses — context, crosschecks and broader counts

Migration Policy Institute offers explainer reports and aggregated estimates (for example, deportations and detention bed counts covering FY 2020–24), and Vera Institute and advocacy groups produce facility maps and snapshots that both visualize ICE’s network and call out gaps in the agency’s public reporting — useful complements when seeking context on how detention totals map to facilities and populations ^{[7] [6]}.

5. Known limitations, divergences and official caveats to account for when comparing sources

The Government Accountability Office found that ICE’s public reports understate total detentions because ICE excludes some individuals initially booked into temporary facilities before transfer to ICE custody, and GAO also found variation in reporting for vulnerable populations, so users should treat raw ICE dashboards as conservative relative to Persist‑derived totals and independent reconstructions ^[9]. Vera and other watchdogs likewise warn that ICE reports are incomplete for some facilities and that methodological differences (as‑of dates, definitions of “book‑in,” and whether Border Patrol arrests are included) create nontrivial divergences across datasets ^{[6] [8]}.

6. Practical approach: triangulate across datasets and watch metadata

To track detentions by immigration status for 2020–2024, start with ICE’s ERO dashboards and FY detention spreadsheets for primary counts, extract OHSS monthly Persist tables for book‑in/book‑out and citizenship/criminality breakdowns, and cross‑validate with Deportation Data Project or TRAC extracts and Migration Policy/Vera analyses to surface inconsistencies; always consult the datasets’ metadata and GAO caveats about excluded temporary bookings and timing differences before drawing conclusions ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [7] [9] [6]}.