What official datasets exist to verify DHS arrest counts in state jurisdictions and how can they be accessed?

1. ICE ERO arrest statistics — the primary agency breakdown for removals and administrative arrests

ICE publishes Arrests, Removal, Detention and Alternatives to Detention statistics — including ERO administrative arrests broken down by citizenship, criminality and Area of Responsibility (field office) — on its statistics page, and these are the most direct official source for ICE arrest counts used in state‑level tallies ^[1].

2. OHSS monthly tables and the Persist dataset — DHS’s statistical system of record

The DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) maintains monthly immigration enforcement tables that report encounters, arrests, book‑ins/outs, detentions and removals and explicitly notes that many tables are drawn from the OHSS Persist dataset, described by the agency as its immigration statistical system of record and including state‑based interactive maps ^{[2] [6]}.

3. DHS and Data.gov portals — machine‑readable access points and high‑value datasets

DHS centralizes links to component datasets on its DHS Data page and through the DHS section of Data.gov, which hosts machine‑readable data sets the department identifies as high‑value; researchers should use these portals to download CSVs, APIs or related documentation rather than only scraping press releases ^{[3] [7]}.

4. Cross‑agency federal arrest data — FBI UCR/CJIS and BJS tools for triangulation

For cross‑check and context, federal criminal arrest compilations such as the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting/Crime Data Explorer (CJIS) and Bureau of Justice Statistics tools provide state and county arrest counts and analytic tools — useful for triangulating trends though they cover different arrest jurisdictions and offense categories than immigration enforcement datasets ^{[8] [9] [4]}.

5. Independent collectors and researchers — Deportation Data Project and advocacy analyses

Third‑party projects like the Deportation Data Project harvest, clean and publish government immigration enforcement datasets (including ICE releases) and produce codebooks and webinars to aid reporters and advocates; such intermediaries can speed analysis and document data quirks but they rely on the same government sources and make interpretive choices researchers should review ^[5].

6. Key limitations, reconciliation challenges, and political context to watch

Official datasets warn that counts may double‑count individuals seen multiple times during reporting periods, that some ICE arrest records lack stable identifiers making state‑level attribution difficult, and that ICE data omit arrests by CBP or local law enforcement that may produce later ICE actions — cautions documented both by OHSS and by independent analysts like Prison Policy, while DHS press releases frame arrest counts in public‑facing, politically salient ways that should not be conflated with raw datasets ^{[2] [10] [11]}.

7. Practical steps to access and verify state counts

To verify DHS arrest counts for a state, download ICE ERO arrest files from the ICE statistics page, retrieve OHSS monthly tables and the Persist dataset via OHSS or the DHS Data page/Data.gov, consult Deportation Data Project mirrored releases for cleaned versions and codebooks, and cross‑reference with BJS/FBI state arrest tools for context; when reconciling discrepancies, check definitions (e.g., “administrative arrest” vs. criminal arrest), time windows, and whether the dataset counts repeated encounters or unique persons — all metadata are available in the datasets or accompanying documentation ^{[1] [2] [3] [5] [9]}.

Exact institutional provenance matters: use ICE/OHSS for DHS internal tallies, Data.gov/DHS for machine‑readable bulk downloads, Deportation Data Project for curated versions and BJS/FBI for complementary criminal arrest baselines, and always read dataset glossaries and limitations before aggregating to the state level ^{[1] [2] [3] [5] [4]}.