How do NGO trackers (Detention Watch Network, ACLU, TRAC) differ from ICE’s published counts and why?
Executive summary
NGO trackers such as TRAC, Freedom for Immigrants, Detention Watch Network and civil‑rights groups including the ACLU routinely produce counts and breakdowns of immigration detention that differ from ICE’s published statistics because they use different snapshots, disaggregate ICE data in ways the agency does not emphasize, and spotlight categories—private facilities, people without criminal convictions, minors and deaths—that ICE’s public dashboards treat differently or embed in caveats (ICE notes its own data “fluctuate until ‘locked’ at the conclusion of the fiscal year”) [1] [2] [3]. Independent trackers often augment official numbers with investigative reporting, FOIA requests and facility‑level analysis to surface trends ICE’s summaries do not foreground, producing persistent divergences in headline totals and interpretations [4] [2].
1. Different snapshots and what gets counted
ICE publishes daily and fiscal‑year tables but warns that figures change until year‑end “lock” and that the site reflects agency data as released [1]; independent groups often compare different dates or average daily populations to capture trends—TRAC, for example, reports average daily populations and breakdowns by conviction status that lead to different totals than a single ICE snapshot [2]. Journalists and analysts citing ICE’s January data note 68,990 people in custody on January 7–8, 2026, a single‑day snapshot that can diverge from monthly averages or facility‑level tallies used by NGOs [5] [6].
2. Disaggregation that changes the story
NGO trackers and research outfits press against aggregate ICE totals by disaggregating who is being held: criminal‑v. civil‑case status, age (including minors in family detention), and arresting authority (ICE v. CBP). TRAC’s published breakdowns show a large share of people in detention have no criminal conviction—TRAC reported 73.6% with no conviction as of late November 2025—an angle that reframes ICE’s raw detention counts into a policy argument about who detention targets [2]. Freedom for Immigrants emphasizes the role of private contractors in housing detainees, noting over 90% of people are held in privately‑run centers according to ICE data, which is a different emphasis than headline ICE population counts [3].
3. Independent methods and sources of divergence
Groups outside ICE rely on FOIA requests, facility reporting, media reporting and in‑house databases to verify or augment the agency’s releases; Vera Institute and investigative outlets say ICE operates “under a veil of secrecy,” prompting researchers to reconstruct realities that ICE’s public pages do not fully expose [4]. Where ICE’s site is presented as the official ledger and carries caveats about data integrity and revisions, NGOs treat the same base data with different methodologies—averaging across days, counting devices such as family‑detention bookings of minors, or compiling removal counts in parallel—which produces systematic differences in published totals and trends [1] [7] [2].
4. Storytelling choices and institutional agendas
Editorial and advocacy priorities shape what numbers are amplified: civil‑liberties groups and detention‑abolition advocates highlight increases in people without criminal records, deaths in custody and the use of private prison capacity to argue for policy change, while ICE emphasizes operational justifications—securing attendance at proceedings or mandatory detention categories—and underscores internal compliance efforts [2] [8] [3]. Each actor’s mandate nudges them to select metrics that best support their narrative: NGOs aim to reveal harms and systemic patterns, ICE aims to document enforcement activity while signaling procedural safeguards [8] [9].
5. What this means for readers and researchers
Discrepancies between ICE’s numbers and NGO trackers do not automatically mean one side is “wrong”; they reflect differing counting rules, timing, emphasis and the use of supplementary data to expose patterns—such as dramatic growth in detainees without criminal convictions or spikes in detained minors and deaths—that raw agency snapshots can obscure [2] [7] [9]. Public accountability requires comparing methods: examine the date used, whether figures are point‑in‑time or averages, which populations are included, and whether private facility and removal data are counted separately or folded into totals [1] [3] [4].