How many immigrants have been arrested by ICE

1. What the official counts show right now

ICE’s own published detention and arrest reporting and datasets made public through FOIA describe the agency’s operations through mid‑October 2025 and subsequent updates; those datasets underpin estimates of tens of thousands of ICE arrests per month and a detention population that reached roughly 66,000 by early December 2025 and near 69,000 in early January 2026 ^{[1] [4] [5] [6]}. One snapshot in the FOIA‑processed public reporting notes that of 41,624 people booked into ICE custody in October 2025, ICE itself arrested 36,635 while CBP arrested 4,989 of that monthly total ^[7].

2. Independent analysis and the scale of the recent surge

Multiple independent analysts and advocacy groups using ICE data say arrests accelerated sharply in 2025, producing rates “more than 30,000 a month” at points and “over 1,000 a day” concentrated in cooperating states, which translates to hundreds of thousands of interior arrests over the course of a year if sustained ^{[2] [3]}. The Deportation Data Project and other academic groups have compiled detailed arrest records that show dramatic increases in interior enforcement starting in early 2025, though the datasets typically cover through mid‑October 2025 and must be extrapolated for later periods ^{[1] [3]}.

3. Who is being counted — and why totals vary

Counts differ by definition: ICE distinguishes arrests it conducts (interior ERO arrests) from border arrests by CBP, and its public dashboards and FOIA releases sometimes include or exclude short‑term custody locations (field offices, courtrooms, border holding) and differentiate people “booked into detention” versus people encountered, processed, or removed ^{[8] [1]}. That definitional complexity explains discrepancies across government press releases, advocacy reports and media summaries; for example, DHS statements emphasize that roughly 70% of ICE arrests are of people with U.S. criminal charges or convictions ^[9], while independent analysis finds a growing share of detainees have no U.S. criminal convictions, and at times nearly half of detainees are non‑criminal immigration cases ^{[10] [4] [2]}.

4. Removals, arrests and the broader picture

Arrests are only one piece of enforcement: removals (deportations) reported in economic and policy analyses can be larger because they include rapid border removals and other actions not initiated by ICE custody alone; Brookings notes that removal counts used in some analyses may nearly double what ICE’s detention data show because they fold in additional enforcement channels ^[11]. Policy and press accounts assert that the current administration expanded ICE manpower and operations in 2025–2026 — a claim echoed by DHS releases touting increased arrests of “worst of the worst” — but independent tracking highlights that the numerical growth in arrests and detention disproportionately involves non‑criminal immigration cases ^{[9] [4] [10]}.

5. Caveats and the bottom line

Precise, single‑figure answers depend on the period and dataset desired: for October 2025, ICE‑bookings counted 41,624 people booked into detention (36,635 arrested by ICE and 4,989 by CBP) ^[7]; for the yearlong surge in 2025, independent trackers document monthly peaks exceeding 30,000 and daily averages above 1,000 in some months, implying totals across the year that amount to hundreds of thousands of arrests when interior and collaborating‑agency roles are included ^{[2] [3]}. Public datasets through October 15, 2025 are available from the Deportation Data Project for more granular counting ^[1]. Because reporting practices, definitions (arrest vs. booking vs. removal), and release timing vary across ICE, DHS, academic trackers and advocacy groups, any headline number should be tied to the source and time window cited rather than presented as a single immutable fact ^{[1] [4] [3]}.