How has the number of ICE detention centers changed since 2020?
Executive summary
The number of facilities used to detain people by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has expanded sharply since 2020, with publicly reported counts exceeding 200 facilities by late 2025 and major growth concentrated in 2024–2025 [1] [2]. That increase reflects both the reopening or repurposing of existing prisons and jails and the formal activation of dozens of new facility codes in ICE datasets, while experts caution that facility-count methods can inflate the apparent growth [3] [4].
1. A clear numerical uptick: more than 200 active sites by late 2025
ICE-related reporting and trackers put the active count of ICE detention sites at roughly 212 facilities as of December 26, 2025, which is 108 more than the number ICE reported as active in January 2025—a dramatic rise in a single year [1]. Independent trackers and advocacy groups also report maps and lists showing “more than 200” immigrant jails and prisons in current use, corroborating that the system is larger now than in early 2020 [5] [6].
2. When the growth happened: a burst in 2024–2025, then continued additions
Multiple sources document that the detention network nearly doubled between 2024 and 2026, driven by the addition of roughly 80 facilities in fiscal year 2025 and at least another two dozen by late December 2025 [2]. Analyses from the Deportation Data Project and other researchers show that much of the numeric increase in detention capacity occurred during the second half of 2024 into 2025, with additional sites added or reactivated through the first months of 2026 [3] [2].
3. How “new” facilities were added: reuse, repurposing, and coding quirks
The rise in facility counts results partly from ICE reopening closed federal and state prisons or converting other buildings (including large warehouses) to hold detainees, as well as from expanding use of existing jails and contract sites—about one-third of the detention increase was due to genuinely new facilities and two-thirds from greater use of existing places, according to the Deportation Data Project [3] [7]. Analysts warn that counting unique ICE facility codes can further inflate the apparent number because single properties can have multiple codes for different units or functions [4].
4. Who’s raising the alarm — and who points to oversight
Advocacy groups, academics, and news outlets have highlighted human-rights and community-concern angles tied to the expansion, pointing to private-prison operators, new county contracts, and local resistance to warehouse-style sites [2] [5] [7]. At the same time, ICE emphasizes its detention-management framework and standards for facilities, noting published FY reports and oversight programs intended to govern any site housing ICE detainees [8]. Those competing perspectives frame the expansion as either an operational scaling or as a policy shift with social and legal consequences.
5. Limits of the available reporting and what it does not settle
Public sources establish a pronounced expansion in the number of facilities used by ICE since 2020 and document the mechanics of that expansion, but they do not provide a single undisputed “2020 baseline” count that can be compared institution-by-institution without methodological caveats; variations arise from whether one counts facility codes, physical sites, or multi-building complexes as separate facilities [4] [3]. Likewise, while the data show fast growth in 2024–2025 and list totals into late 2025, available sources do not uniformly reconcile every facility addition or closure across agencies and private contractors [1] [2].
Conclusion
In short, the ICE detention network has grown substantially since 2020, with the bulk of numeric expansion concentrated in 2024–2025; official and independent tallies converge on a system exceeding 200 active sites by late 2025, though methodological differences about what counts as a “facility” mean the precise headline number should be interpreted with caution [1] [2] [4].