Ice detention statistics 2020
Executive summary
In 2020 ICE detention activity fell from 2019 levels as the COVID-19 pandemic and Title 42 expulsions sharply reduced border apprehensions, producing lower book‑ins and fewer removals than the prior year [1] [2]. Official agency counts show tens of thousands of arrests and removals—103,603 administrative arrests and 185,884 removals in FY2020—while independent auditors warn ICE’s public reporting omits certain temporary facility bookings and therefore understates the total detained population [2] [3].
1. What the raw 2020 numbers say about arrests and removals
ICE’s archived FY2020 enforcement report records 103,603 administrative arrests by Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in fiscal year 2020, a 28 percent decline from FY2019, and reports 185,884 removals, about 30 percent fewer than the prior year—drops the agency attributes largely to border closures and use of public‑health authority under Title 42 [2] [1].
2. Detention counts, methodology and the limits of public reporting
Public-facing detention totals from ICE are snapshots or averaged values that exclude some categories of bookings—particularly people first placed in temporary facilities before transfer—so the Government Accountability Office found ICE’s public reporting understates total detentions and recommended stronger data reporting [3]; independent dashboards such as the Vera Institute’s let users examine daily detention counts through March 30, 2020, because agency releases alone obscure longitudinal trends [4].
3. Why 2020 detention fell: pandemic, Title 42 and operational changes
ICE and its ERO report that FY2020 saw a decline in book‑ins from Customs and Border Protection due to fewer border apprehensions and CBP’s use of Title 42 expulsions during the pandemic, and ICE documents its evolving COVID‑19 guidance and custody decisions across detention facilities in 2020 [1] [2].
4. Who was detained and contested claims about criminality
ICE’s FY2020 materials emphasize that many arrests had criminal convictions or pending charges—claiming around 90 percent of those administratively arrested had criminal convictions or pending charges at the time of arrest—but outside analysts and later independent data releases have produced divergent portraits of detainee criminality and the share of detainees without convictions, underscoring contested narratives about who detention targets [2] [5].
5. Health, mortality and conditions in context of 2020 trends
Scholars and health analysts note rising health risks across ICE custody through 2020, including a documented increase in suicide rates among detainees from 2010–2020 and repeated findings that many detention deaths were associated with failures to meet medical standards—factors that intersected with pandemic conditions in 2020 [6].
6. Competing perspectives and institutional incentives
ICE insists it uses detention to secure appearance and public safety and points to dashboards and evolving statistics to justify practices [7] [8], while advocates, researchers and watchdogs argue the agency’s partial data releases and reliance on snapshots obscure total detention volumes and human costs, an information asymmetry highlighted in Vera’s dashboard work and the GAO review [4] [3].
7. What this means for interpreting 2020 figures going forward
Readers should treat FY2020 figures as reliable within the limits of ICE’s stated methodology but expect undercounts where transfers from temporary sites or local jail holds are excluded; independent compilations and the GAO recommend improved transparency because single “year‑end” snapshots can mask rapid operational shifts like those driven by the pandemic and Title 42 [3] [4] [1].