How many U.S. citizens were arrested by ICE in the past year (FY2024)?

1. What the official ICE report counts — big numbers, few citizen details

ICE’s FY2024 Annual Report lists 113,431 ERO arrests and highlights that 81,312 (71.7%) were noncitizens with criminal convictions or pending charges, but the report frames arrests by country of citizenship and criminal history rather than isolating U.S. citizens who were arrested or detained, so it does not supply a definitive FY2024 count of U.S. citizens taken into ICE custody in the documents shown here ^{[4] [5]}.

2. Investigative reporting finds dozens to a few hundred citizen detentions, not a formal statistic

ProPublica compiled cases from social media, lawsuits, court records and local reporting and reported “more than 170” U.S. citizens who have been held by immigration agents in the span of their reporting; that package includes individual stories such as George Retes and documents multiple examples of citizens detained and sometimes held for days ^[1]. The New Republic cites that same ProPublica figure and uses it to argue the phenomenon is real and undercounted, but this is journalistic compilation, not an ICE official tally ^[6].

3. Legal and advocacy coverage underscores that ICE detains citizens “in error” and that agencies deny intentional citizen arrests

DHS/ICE routinely states they do not arrest U.S. citizens for immigration enforcement; ProPublica reported the Department of Homeland Security responded that “we don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” while documenting contrary cases in which agents appeared to know someone was a citizen yet still detained them ^[1]. Legal analyses and commentators characterize many citizen detentions as errors arising from misidentification, outdated records, or operational overreach, but the sources here vary in tone—from sympathetic legal critique to critiques of agency accountability ^{[1] [6]}.

4. Recent court rulings and local incidents highlight operational failures that can ensnare citizens

A federal judge in Chicago ordered limits and reporting requirements around warrantless arrests, after plaintiffs alleged repeated unlawful arrests without warrants; a court ordered monthly public reports on arrests made without a pre-issued warrant, reflecting judicial concern about ICE’s tactics and their potential to sweep up citizens in the vicinity of operations ^[7]. Separately, reporting on mass local operations (e.g., Chicago “Operation Midway Blitz”) alleges thousands arrested in a period and civil-rights groups claim many were ensnared—these episodes create the context in which citizen detentions occur, but they do not translate into a clean nationwide FY2024 citizen-arrest number in the documents provided ^{[8] [7]}.

5. Competing interpretations: rare mistakes vs. systemic problem

Some outlets and advocates present these citizen detentions as isolated “errors” that occur amid large-scale enforcement (ICE/DHS position quoted by ProPublica), while investigative reporters and civil-rights groups argue the pattern of videos, lawsuits, and local complaints points to systemic misidentification and overreach ^{[1] [6]}. The ICE FY2024 report frames activity around prioritizing criminal noncitizen arrests, which supports the agency’s position that citizens are not the target population—but that framing does not negate the documented incidents ^[4].

6. What’s missing and how to get closer to an answer

Available sources here do not include an ICE-published FY2024 line-item count of arrests of U.S. citizens; ICE public statistics break down arrests by country of citizenship and criminal history but the annual report and statistical pages shown do not give an explicit nationwide count of citizen arrests for FY2024 ^{[4] [5]}. To produce an authoritative FY2024 number would require either (a) ICE releasing a specific dataset on citizenship status for all ERO arrests in FY2024, or (b) an independent dataset like the ProPublica compilation expanded and validated against court records and agency databases—neither is present in the current materials ^{[1] [5]}.

7. Practical takeaway for readers and policymakers

The evidence in these sources documents nontrivial instances—dozens to a few hundred—of U.S. citizens detained by ICE in recent reporting ^{[1] [6]}, while ICE’s public materials emphasize its focus on noncitizen criminal arrests and do not provide a clear FY2024 citizen-arrest count ^{[4] [5]}. That gap in official transparency is itself newsworthy and is a central point in court challenges and investigative coverage demanding clearer agency reporting and stronger safeguards against misidentification ^{[7] [1]}.