How many documented cases exist of U.S. citizens wrongfully detained by ICE since 2018?

1. The central problem: the government doesn’t track confirmed wrongful detentions

A U.S. Government Accountability Office review found ICE has policies for citizenship investigations but lacks reliable systems to track cases involving citizenship investigations and reported that available ICE data showed issuance of detainers for at least 895 potential U.S. citizens — a figure that signals the scope of the problem but is not a count of confirmed wrongful detentions since 2018 ^[1]. Because ICE and DHS do not publish a definitive, post hoc tally of confirmed mistaken arrests or removals of U.S. citizens, researchers and news organizations must piece together cases from local records, litigation, and reporting, leaving the overall number uncertain ^[1].

2. Independent investigations add hundreds of documented cases but not a definitive total

Investigative projects compiled by outlets such as ProPublica and local partners identified more than 170 instances in a recent year in which people described themselves as U.S. citizens and were held or confronted by immigration agents — a powerful signal that citizen detentions are occurring and being reported, yet those compilations are not a systematic, multi-year government dataset and therefore cannot be extrapolated into a definitive since-2018 count without caveats ^{[2] [3]}.

3. Historical audits underscore long‑standing misclassification but use different timeframes

Analyses predating 2018 show similar patterns: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse data analyzed and summarized by the American Immigration Council found at least 2,840 U.S. citizens were wrongly identified as potentially removable between 2002 and 2017, and that ICE arrested 674 “potential U.S. citizens,” detained 121, and deported 70 in the period that watchdogs analyzed — figures that illuminate systemic misclassification but stop short of answering the post‑2018 question on their own ^[4].

4. Official pushback and political framing complicate the record

DHS and ICE publicly insist they do not deport U.S. citizens and argue their personnel conduct careful verification during operations; a DHS statement framed recent media narratives as false and defended enforcement practices, illustrating an institutional counter‑narrative that colors how data are reported and interpreted ^[5]. Independent journalists and civil‑liberties researchers, by contrast, document cases of citizens detained, sometimes forcefully, and call for stronger oversight ^{[2] [3]}.

5. Why producing a single number since 2018 is not supported by the sources

The available sources show three limits: the government does not maintain a clean public count of confirmed wrongful citizen detentions ^[1], investigative media compilations capture many but not all incidents and focus on specific periods ^{[2] [3]}, and historical audits use different windows and definitions ^[4]. Taken together, the evidence supports saying “hundreds of documented cases” have been reported since 2018 rather than a precise integer; asserting a single exact number would overstate what the documented record actually provides ^{[2] [3] [1]}.

6. Alternate explanations, agendas and what to watch next

Some of the discrepancy stems from operational limits — misidentification based on database errors or similar names — and from political incentives: enforcement agencies emphasize targeting noncitizens and deny systematic citizen removals while advocacy groups and journalists emphasize abuses and undercounting ^{[6] [5] [2]}. The GAO’s call for better tracking of citizenship investigations is the clearest, neutral remedy documented in the records reviewed and would be the best way to turn the current patchwork of reports into an authoritative count ^[1].