How many ICE interior arrests and removals occurred year-by-year from 2017 through 2024 according to ICE and TRAC data?
Executive summary
ICE’s public dashboards and TRAC’s FOIA-derived databases both offer partial—but not identical—counts of arrests and removals; the records show large swings across years and a sharp shift in FY2024 toward removals that began at the border rather than interior administrative arrests (ICE reports ERO removed 271,484 people in FY2024, of whom 47,732 were originally arrested in the interior) [1] [2]. A fully reconciled, year‑by‑year table of “ICE interior arrests and removals” for 2017–2024 is not directly present in the provided sources; the evidence here gives key annual anchors and method caveats from ICE, TRAC and GAO [3] [2] [4].
1. What the agencies report: ICE’s dashboards and the FY2024 snapshot
ICE’s new ERO enforcement dashboards, updated through December 31, 2024, present quarterly and fiscal‑year tallies of arrests and removals and explicitly separate removals that originated from CBP/border encounters from those originating from interior ICE arrests, with ICE reporting 271,484 ERO removals in FY2024 and specifying that 47,732 of those removals were of people initially arrested by ICE in the interior while the remaining roughly 223,752 were first encountered by CBP at the border and ports [2] [1].
2. TRAC’s record-by-record approach and what it provides
TRAC’s Deportation Data is built from case‑level ICE records obtained through FOIA and litigation and allows analysts to classify each removal by where the arrest occurred (border vs. interior) as well as criminal history details; TRAC documents that its data underpins detailed year and case‑level counts and it compiles arrest time series going back in detail to October 2018 for book‑ins following ICE arrests [3] [5]. TRAC reports and tools therefore can produce the interior vs. border breakdown year by year, but a consolidated year‑by‑year table for 2017–2024 is not directly present in the excerpts provided here [3] [5].
3. Key year anchors from the available reporting (what can be stated with confidence)
Two authoritative anchors appear in the sources: the Government Accountability Office reports removals fell from 276,122 in 2019 to 81,547 in 2022 (a multi‑year decline that the GAO highlights) [4], and ICE’s FY2024 ERO totals (271,484 removals; 47,732 interior‑origin) show a rebound and a redistribution toward border‑origin removals in that year [4] [1]. ICE also reported that in the third quarter of FY2024 it removed nearly 68,000 individuals, illustrating the quarterly cadence behind the annual totals [6].
4. Arrests (book‑ins) versus removals — why simple comparisons mislead
TRAC emphasizes that ICE’s public “arrests” and “book‑ins” are tracked differently and that removals are reported as cumulative fiscal‑year totals, while arrests/book‑ins are reported monthly; TRAC’s summary notes an average of 759 noncitizens per day were booked into ICE custody during FY2024, a figure used to compare enforcement intensity across administrations [5] [7]. The GAO also found ICE’s public reporting understates detention totals and recommended strengthening reporting practices, a methodological caveat that complicates direct year‑to‑year comparisons [4].
5. Why a precise 2017–2024 interior arrests/removals table cannot be produced from these excerpts
The available sources establish data availability and provide select annual totals (e.g., 2019 and 2022 from GAO; FY2024 ERO totals and interior‑origin removals from ICE; TRAC’s underlying dataset and time series reach back to late 2018) but do not include a ready, consolidated year‑by‑year numeric table of interior arrests and interior removals for each calendar or fiscal year 2017–2024 in the provided snippets [4] [1] [3] [5]. Creating the exact 2017–2024 series therefore requires querying ICE’s ERO dashboard and TRAC’s removal database directly to extract and reconcile interior‑origin arrest and removal tallies [2] [3].
6. How to get the full table and reconcile differences
To assemble the requested year‑by‑year series, use ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations statistics dashboard (covers through Dec. 31, 2024) for ERO totals and quarterly detail and use TRAC’s case‑level removal database (Deportation Data) to extract removals classified as “interior” for each fiscal year; reconcile differences by noting ICE’s reporting conventions, TRAC’s FOIA‑based case linkage, and GAO caveats about undercounted detentions [2] [3] [4].