What gender disparities exist in ICE removals in 2025 compared with previous years?
Executive summary
In 2025, observable gender disparities in ICE removals are harder to quantify because official reporting practices changed: ICE stopped publishing required transgender detainee counts beginning February 4, 2025, and the immigration courts changed the “gender” variable to “sex,” complicating longitudinal comparisons [1]. Independent research and advocacy organizations document increased removals overall in 2025 and warn that enforcement sweeps and detention patterns have gendered impacts—especially on women, pregnant people, and transgender migrants—but the absence of consistent, disaggregated data from ICE and DHS means the precise magnitude and direction of those disparities cannot be fully verified with available federal statistics [2] [3] [4] [1].
1. Federal reporting changes that obscure gender-resolved trends
ICE’s official biweekly detention reports omitted the statutorily required section on the number of people who are transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming beginning with the first report after February 4, 2025, and the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review switched the database variable label from “gender” to “sex” in May 2025—changes advocates say produce information loss and make year‑to‑year gender comparisons unreliable [1]. ICE’s public statistics are also published with a lag and subject to post‑publication adjustments, further complicating efforts to lock down trends by sex or gender across fiscal years [5].
2. Aggregate removals rose in 2025, but sex- and gender-specific counts are incomplete
Multiple analyses and secondary sources report a sharp escalation in removals and detention activity in 2025 compared with prior years—data and summaries compiled by observers indicate removals accelerated under the 2025 enforcement posture—but ICE’s publicly posted arrest, removal and detention tables do not consistently present a complete, continuous breakdown by gender or include the transgender counts once required by Congress, creating a critical gap between aggregate enforcement totals and gender-disaggregated removals [2] [6] [5] [1].
3. Evidence of gendered harms and disproportionate risk to women and transgender people
Scholars and rights groups document specific, gendered harms from intensified enforcement: community safeguards crumble when raids and family separations increase, producing heightened risks of gender‑based violence and barriers to justice for survivors; reports also describe cases of pregnant women mistreated in custody and the deportation of survivors before testimony could be recorded, all signaling that women and those who are pregnant or caregiving bear distinct burdens under expanded removals [4] [3]. The Vera Institute archived ICE’s prior transgender booking data—showing at least 700 transgender book‑ins from Oct. 1, 2020 to Jan. 12, 2025 and 47 in custody on the last reported date—which illustrates how removal and detention patterns for transgender people can be tracked when agencies comply with reporting mandates [1].
4. Conflicting narratives and political incentives that shape data access
Advocacy organizations and watchdogs frame the withholding of transgender data and the relabeling of gender variables as politically motivated steps that reduce accountability and obscure enforcement’s human impact [1]. Pro‑enforcement narratives emphasize rising removal totals and resource investments to justify expanded operations [2] [6], while human‑rights researchers stress that without transparent, sex‑ and gender‑disaggregated data, claims about whether specific groups are disproportionately removed remain assertions rather than exhaustively documented findings [1] [4].
5. Bottom line: disparities exist in experience and risk, but precise 2025 shifts by gender are unmeasurable with current public data
There is credible evidence that intensified 2025 enforcement has gendered consequences—women, pregnant people, survivors of gender‑based violence, and transgender migrants face particular vulnerabilities—but because ICE removed required transgender statistics and federal datasets changed variable labeling, authoritative, comparable measures of gender disparities in removals for 2025 versus prior years are not publicly available; researchers must rely on partial archives, secondary analyses, and qualitative reporting until agencies restore consistent, disaggregated reporting [1] [5] [4] [2].