How many juveniles overall have entered ICE custody since 2023 according to FOIA-derived datasets?
Executive summary
Freedom-of-Information–derived datasets compiled by researchers and advocacy groups document every ICE book‑in and detention record from late 2023 through 2025, but none of the provided sources publish a single, authoritative “total juveniles since 2023” figure; advocates relying on those FOIA data report that ICE placed more than 600 children in detention in 2025 alone, while the underlying individual‑level releases needed to compute an exact cumulative total are available for researchers to query [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. What the FOIA releases actually contain and their time window
The key FOIA‑derived products are: the Deportation Data Project’s published raw ICE files and documentation covering arrests, detentions, encounters and removals (with a historic package through September 2023 and successive FOIA‑driven updates covering September 1, 2023 through mid‑2025), and the Vera Institute’s ICE Detention Trends dashboard built from those and earlier ICE FOIA releases; together they include individual‑level book‑ins and detention history information for every person ICE shows as having been in custody over the covered dates [5] [6] [7] [2] [4].
2. What the sources say about juveniles specifically
The data schema and dashboard explicitly tag facility types such as “Juvenile” (a designation ICE uses for ICE custody of persons under 18, not to be conflated with ORR shelters for unaccompanied minors), so the raw records do allow isolation of juvenile book‑ins in principle; the Deportation Data Project’s documentation confirms the detention tables include individual book‑ins and fields researchers can use to subset by facility type and dates [7] [4]. The Vera Institute dashboard likewise flags a “Juvenile” facility type in its Family/Youth classification [7].
3. What public reporting claims about recent juvenile detentions
Advocacy and legal organizations that analyzed newly released FOIA files have publicly reported totals for portions of the period: for example, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and associated authors cite previously unpublished data showing ICE placed “more than 600 children in immigration detention facilities” in 2025, a tally they say exceeds the previous four years combined [3]. Reporting by immigrant‑advocacy groups also documents that FOIA releases in 2025 revealed ICE’s reliance on nontraditional sites (hotels, juvenile jails contracted to hold under‑18s) and an uptick in bookings of minors [8] [3].
4. Why a single cumulative number since 2023 is not presented in these sources
None of the provided summaries or press items include a ready‑made, single cumulative total for “juveniles entering ICE custody since 2023”; instead, the FOIA releases themselves are raw, individual‑level datasets intended for analysis by researchers, and the Deportation Data Project and Vera provide the files and dashboards that enable such counting but do not, in the cited snippets, present the overall aggregate across the full September 2023–October 2025 span as a single headline number [4] [1] [2] [6]. That means public reporting can assert partial year totals (e.g., 2025 >600) but—based on the sources provided—an exact cumulative figure from Jan 1, 2023 through the latest FOIA release is not published here [3] [1].
5. How to get the exact figure and the caveats analysts must account for
To produce a precise overall count from 2023 onward requires downloading and querying the FOIA‑sourced detention/book‑in tables (the Deportation Data Project’s raw files and Vera’s dataset are explicit sources) and filtering by date and ICE facility type “Juvenile”; the documentation warns about changes in dataset structure at key date boundaries and that facility labels and transfer records can complicate unique‑person counts, so careful de‑duplication and awareness of dataset breaks (Sept. 30/Oct. 1 boundaries and later 2025 updates) are necessary [4] [7]. The FOIA‑derived releases covering Sep. 1, 2023 through Oct. 15, 2025 exist and have been posted by the Deportation Data Project and used by Vera, enabling such an analysis [1] [2] [6].
6. Bottom line
Based on the documents and reporting provided, an authoritative cumulative total for “juveniles overall entering ICE custody since 2023” is not spelled out in the cited FOIA‑derived summaries; advocates using those FOIA releases report that ICE placed more than 600 children in detention in 2025 alone, and the underlying FOIA datasets covering Sept. 2023–Oct. 2025 are publicly available for any researcher to compute the precise cumulative figure [3] [1] [4] [6].