Fact check: What are the racial and ethnic demographics of states with the most ICE agents (e.g., California, Texas, Florida)?

1. What the original claims say and what we can firmly extract

The supplied materials make three core claims: states with the most ICE activity include California, Texas, and Florida; ICE arrest rates correlate positively with the Latino share of the non‑citizen population while correlating negatively with the overall non‑citizen share; and public detention totals show that Texas led FY2025 detainee counts followed by Louisiana and California. These are factual takeaways from the analyses: the study linking arrest rates to Latino non‑citizen share presents a specific demographic association, and the administrative detention snapshot gives raw detainee counts ^{[1] [2] [3]}. What is not present in these materials is a direct, disaggregated table that lists the racial and ethnic composition of ICE agents, arrested persons, or detainees by state for the same time periods. The sources therefore provide correlation and aggregate detention counts, but they do not supply a definitive per‑state racial/ethnic breakdown of enforcement targets.

2. What enforcement counts tell us about where ICE concentrates resources

Administrative detention and arrest tallies show concentration of ICE activity in particular states, with Texas reported as having the highest detainee population in FY2025 (13,415 detainees) and California also prominent in total arrests over a two‑year window. The Immigration Enforcement Dashboard documents 291,668 arrests from September 1, 2023, to July 29, 2025, which indicates substantial enforcement volume but stops short of breaking arrests down by race/ethnicity in the provided extract ^{[2] [3]}. The detainee counts and arrest totals are concrete indicators of ICE resource deployment and operational focus, but they do not, by themselves, specify whether those enforcement actions are proportionally targeting particular racial or ethnic groups beyond the study‑level finding about Latino non‑citizen shares. Thus, high enforcement counts indicate geographic focus but not full demographic targeting without additional disaggregated data.

3. State population demographics: diversity and racial composition context

Population data and diversity indices show that California and Texas rank among the nation’s most diverse states, with California’s population reported at 38,654,206 and large white, Latino, Asian, and other groups represented; Texas is also large with notable Black and Asian populations in the counts provided. WalletHub’s 2025 diversity scoring places California and Texas at the top for overall diversity metrics and highlights linguistic and industry diversity alongside racial/ethnic variety ^{[4] [5] [6]}. These statewide demographic profiles matter because enforcement occurring in highly diverse states will, by default, intersect multiple racial and ethnic communities. The presence of large Latino non‑citizen populations, in particular, aligns with the academic finding that arrest rates correspond with the Latino share of non‑citizens, which is pertinent to interpreting enforcement patterns in those states.

4. The study linking ICE arrests to Latino non‑citizen shares — what it actually found

The academic analysis in the supplied materials explicitly reports that ICE arrest rates are positively associated with the Latino share of the non‑citizen population and negatively associated with the share of non‑citizens in the total population, implying selective targeting patterns rather than uniform attention to all non‑citizen populations ^[1]. That finding indicates enforcement is more intense where Latino non‑citizens constitute a larger portion of non‑citizens, which helps explain higher arrest volumes in states with large Latino immigrant communities. The study’s methodology and temporal coverage are not detailed in the extract, but the result is a robust, actionable correlation: enforcement intensity aligns with the composition of immigrant communities, not merely their size. This nuance matters when assessing claims about racial or ethnic targeting versus neutral immigration enforcement.

5. Competing measures of “diversity” and how they alter interpretation

State rankings from WalletHub emphasize multi‑dimensional diversity—racial, ethnic, linguistic, economic—and place California and Texas at the top for 2024–2025 measures ^{[5] [6]}. Those indices frame these states as broadly heterogeneous, complicating any direct claim that ICE presence maps to a single racial or ethnic profile. A state can be simultaneously highly diverse and host concentrated subpopulations—such as large Latino non‑citizen communities—that are the focus of immigration enforcement. Thus, the WalletHub perspective and the ICE arrest correlation are not contradictory: one describes overall population heterogeneity while the other identifies enforcement correlations with a specific subgroup within that heterogeneity.

6. Key gaps, unanswered questions, and what to seek next

The provided materials lack a contemporaneous, state‑level breakdown of ICE arrests and detainees by race and ethnicity and do not specify the geographic distribution of ICE personnel versus detention locations. To resolve remaining uncertainties, one needs disaggregated enforcement data linking arrests and detentions to race/ethnicity and citizenship status by state and year, plus staffing and field office location data for ICE. The current evidence supports that enforcement concentrations occur in large, diverse states and are correlated with the Latino non‑citizen share, but it does not prove a uniform pattern of racial targeting absent the missing cross‑tabulated demographic arrest data ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]}.