How many U.S. citizens have been mistakenly detained or deported by ICE in the past decade, according to ICE/DHS records?
Executive summary
ICE and DHS maintain that their enforcement systems are designed to avoid arresting or deporting U.S. citizens, and the departments have publicly rejected reporting that citizens were removed [1]. Yet independent reviews and watchdog summaries—most prominently a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis cited by advocacy groups and legal outlets—identify dozens of cases in which people believed to be U.S. citizens were arrested, detained, or even removed, with available counts of up to 674 arrests, 121 detentions and 70 deportations over the multi‑year window the GAO studied [2] [3].
1. The numbers that keep repeating: what watchdogs report
Multiple outside organizations have leaned on GAO findings to quantify the problem, reporting that GAO-compiled data showed roughly 674 potential U.S. citizens were arrested by ICE, 121 were held in custody, and as many as 70 were removed in the period the watchdog examined—figures that have been circulated by the American Immigration Council and referenced in legal commentary [2] [3].
2. The federal agencies’ stance: categorical denials and limited internal data
DHS and ICE publicly assert they do not arrest or deport U.S. citizens as part of civil immigration enforcement and have issued statements disputing reporting that claimed otherwise, saying enforcement officers are trained to verify status and that the agency does not detain U.S. citizens [1]. ICE’s public statistics portal publishes detailed ERO arrest and custody breakdowns by citizenship and criminal history categories but does not provide a clear, directly comparable official tally of wrongful citizen arrests or removals that matches GAO’s compilation [4].
3. Why counts diverge: definitional, data and procedural gaps
Discrepancies arise because the federal government long maintained it does not centrally track all instances where citizens were mistakenly processed, and watchdogs have had to piece together cases from litigation, NGO intake, and limited federal datasets—an approach documented in academic and legal analyses showing the government’s historical failure to maintain a comprehensive record of citizen detentions or removals [5]. That methodological patchwork helps explain why independent counts (e.g., GAO-derived numbers highlighted by the American Immigration Council) differ from agency statements [1] [2].
4. The human and legal context behind the raw counts
Reports and litigation make clear that even a small number of wrongful detentions or removals can have severe consequences—citizens have described long holds, denial of communication, and near‑deportation experiences that prompted legal suits and congressional inquiries [6] [7]. Advocacy groups and law firms point to past cases and GAO findings as proof the problem is real and systemic, while DHS/ICE emphasize training and procedural safeguards intended to prevent such errors [3] [1].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
Based on the watchdog compilation publicized by advocacy and legal outlets, the best available consolidated figure for the period reviewed by GAO is approximately 674 arrests, 121 detentions and up to 70 deportations of people later identified as possible U.S. citizens [2] [3]. That said, DHS/ICE dispute the characterization that they “deport U.S. citizens” and point to agency practices and public statements denying such removals, while ICE’s official statistics do not provide a straightforward, agency‑verified count to fully confirm or refute the GAO‑based numbers—so the record remains contested and constrained by data gaps [1] [4] [5].