Which counties and states have the highest documented ICE arrest counts since January 2025?
Executive summary
ICE arrests since January 2025 have been heavily concentrated in a handful of large states, with Texas, Florida and California reported as the three states with the highest documented arrest counts in the first half of 2025 (Jan 20–June 26) according to the Deportation Data Project and media summaries [1] [2]. Comprehensive, individual-level ICE datasets exist and were used by research groups to map arrests through October 15, 2025, but the publicly summarized reporting emphasizes state-level totals and arrest-rate maps rather than a definitive, widely circulated list of specific counties with the very highest counts [3] UCLACNKState_Variations_in_ICE_Arrests_July2025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[4].
1. States with the highest documented ICE arrests: the headline winners
Multiple public analyses and media outlets using Deportation Data Project and related FOIA-derived ICE records identify Texas, Florida and California as accounting for the largest shares of arrests early in 2025, together making up more than 41% of arrests between January 20 and June 26, 2025 [1] [2]. Prison Policy’s state-by-state tables and UCLA’s state-variation analysis corroborate that arrests surged nationally after Jan. 20 and remained concentrated in states with large immigrant populations and heavy ICE field office activity, consistent with those three states topping raw-count lists [5] [4]. Independent trackers also report that about 93% of arrests can be associated with a state location in the available data, reinforcing that state-level tallies are relatively complete even when finer geographic tags are imperfect [6].
2. What the underlying datasets can — and cannot — tell readers about counties
The Deportation Data Project has published individual-level ICE records responsive to FOIA requests that, in principle, permit geographic disaggregation down to arrest locations and counties, and researchers have used those files to produce maps and tables through October 15, 2025 [2] [3]. However, summary reporting that reached broad audiences tends to present state totals or arrest-rate maps rather than a single canonical list of “top counties,” and several methodological caveats accompany the datasets — for example, ICE’s published extracts sometimes omit certain immigration-related encounters (notably CBP actions) and the state fill-ins rely on ICE field office assignments and arrest-location descriptions [5] [7]. As a result, while county-level analysis is feasible from the raw releases, the mainstream summaries available to date emphasize states over counties [2] [3].
3. Where county-level claims run into data limits and why researchers differ
Researchers such as UCLA and Prison Policy point out that simple county counts can be distorted by where arrests originate (jails versus community raids), the way ICE assigns arrest locations to an office or county, and missing categories in some ICE extracts — factors that make cross-county comparisons sensitive to methodology [4] [5]. The Deportation Data Project and FOIA-derived files allow tracing individual pathways through arrests and detainers, but public reporting has emphasized arrest rates per noncitizen population and state-level maps to avoid misleading scale effects inherent in raw county counts [2] [4]. Where outlets do name specific counties, readers should check whether counts reflect arrests conducted in county jails, community operations, or transfers between facilities, since those practices can inflate counts tied to a facility’s county rather than an individual’s residence [7] [8].
4. Broader context: why totals spiked and what that means for interpreting “highest”
The rise in arrests is tied to policy and resourcing changes in 2025 — researchers document a marked uptick in interior arrests after January and again after May as ICE shifted toward more community operations and detention capacity expanded from roughly 40,000 to over 60,000 beds between January and October 2025, a dynamic that concentrated enforcement where field offices and detention networks were strongest [5] [3]. National trackers and ICE’s own statistics show more arrests but a falling share of people with prior violent convictions, which complicates simple readings of “high arrest” counties as being places of concentrated dangerous criminality [6] [9]. Facility-level surges and task-force activity can therefore make a county with a large jail or detention center appear as a hotspot even when arrests were operationally driven rather than exclusively locally initiated [8] [3].
5. Bottom line — states; counties require direct dataset queries
The best-evidenced answer from the provided reporting is that Texas, Florida and California had the highest documented ICE arrest counts in early-to-mid 2025, with datasets showing the concentration of arrests in those states [1] [2]. Precise ranking of counties with the highest arrest counts is not consistently given in the summaries and depends on methodological choices; the Deportation Data Project’s FOIA-derived files permit county-level analysis but the mainstream reports emphasize state totals and arrest rates, so definitive county lists should be drawn directly from the underlying individual-level datasets with attention to how arrest locations were coded [3] [7].