How frequent were ICE raids in the US in 2023 and 2024?
Executive summary
ICE’s official data and investigative trackers show a clear uptick in interior enforcement in fiscal year 2024 compared with 2023, with removals and arrests rising sharply — but the sources do not provide a single, definitive count of “raids” as discrete events, so frequency must be read through proxy measures like arrests, removals and average daily arrest rates (ICE dashboards; Newsweek) [1] [2].
1. The headline numbers: arrests, removals and a daily rate
ICE’s public dashboards cover arrests, detentions and removals through December 31, 2024, and the agency reported sharp year-over-year gains in 2024, including a third-quarter 2024 removal tally of nearly 68,000 noncitizens — a 69% increase over the third quarter of FY2023 and more than 140% of ICE’s removals for all of FY2023 — signaling far higher enforcement activity in 2024 than 2023 [1] [3]. Independent reportage summarized ICE’s operational tempo during FY2024 as an average daily arrest rate of about 310 arrests per day for ICE officers [2]. Another metric reported by the Department of Homeland Security contrasts the first 50 days of the subsequent administration with FY2024 totals, noting that ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations made 33,242 at‑large arrests in FY2024 [4].
2. What “frequency” means here — raids vs. encounters
Reporting and datasets treat enforcement two ways: discrete community or worksite “raids” cataloged by advocates and journalists, and continuous operational measures maintained by ICE (arrests, removals, transfers). Advocacy trackers like ICEwatch documented over 1,600 named raids in earlier years but stopped updates in 2022, so they are useful for patterns but not for a full 2023–24 tally [5]. ICE’s dashboards, by contrast, quantify encounters (arrests, detentions, removals) through late 2024 but do not enumerate each “raid” event in a way that yields a simple raids-per-month figure [1] [6].
3. Trends: a clear rise in 2024 relative to 2023
Multiple ICE releases and summaries indicate that 2024 saw substantially more interior enforcement activity than 2023: the agency’s quarterly update framed 2024 removals as far outpacing 2023 removals [3], and news coverage captured the higher average daily arrest rates for FY2024 [2]. Independent data projects and civil‑society trackers that cover different slices of ICE activity confirm that measurable metrics used to proxy “frequency” — arrests, detainers, transfers and removals — rose through 2024 compared to 2023 [6] [5].
4. Geography, targets and types of operations — what the sources say
The sources make clear that enforcement took multiple forms — worksite actions, community arrests, chartered transfer flights and detentions — but granular, national lists of every raid in 2023–24 are not centrally published; advocates’ maps capture many high‑profile and community‑reported raids while ICE’s data emphasize aggregate arrests and removals and flight activity separately [5] [1]. Journalistic accounts and advocacy research demonstrate that worksite raids historically have been a visible component of interior enforcement but that the balance between worksite, community and border‑proximate operations shifts by administration and policy emphasis [7] [2].
5. Data gaps, caveats and hidden agendas
A central reporting limitation is definitional: “raid” is not a consistently reported unit in federal statistics, forcing reliance on proxies like arrest counts, removals and flight logs [1] [6]. Advocacy groups publish raid maps to push policy change and raise alarm about tactics (ICEwatch), while ICE’s public releases emphasize aggregate operational success and increases in removals — each source carries an institutional agenda that shapes selection and framing [5] [3]. Where sources lack daily or event-level catalogs for 2023–24, it is not possible from these materials alone to state a precise number of raids nationwide for those two years.
6. Bottom line
Measured by arrests, removals and related operational indicators, ICE’s enforcement activity was materially higher in 2024 than in 2023 — removals jumped steeply in FY2024 and the average daily arrest rate reported for FY2024 was roughly 310 per day — but existing public sources do not convert those metrics into a single, authoritative count of “raids” as distinct events across the United States, so frequency must be understood through these proxies and with attention to source limitations [3] [2] [1] [5] [6].