How many US citizens have been detained by ICE 2025-2026?
Executive summary
There is no reliable, publicly available tally of how many U.S. citizens were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during 2025–2026 because the federal government does not systematically track detentions by U.S. citizenship in a way that yields a definitive national count, a gap documented in investigative reporting [1]. What can be stated with confidence is that ICE’s overall detained population ballooned to record levels in late 2025 and early 2026—roughly 68,000–69,000 people in custody at mid-December and early January—yet those totals are not a proxy for citizen detentions [2] [3] [4].
1. The core reporting gap: no authoritative count of citizen detentions
Investigations and watchdog reporting conclude that the U.S. government does not maintain a clear, public record enumerating how many U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents, meaning a definitive national number for 2025–2026 is not available from official sources [1]. ProPublica and other outlets have flagged the absence of an administratively tracked figure for citizen detentions, and summary datasets released by ICE emphasize aggregate detention counts and country-of-citizenship breakdowns that are not straightforward to use to identify wrongful citizen detentions at scale [1] [5].
2. Context: detention surged, making errors more consequential
ICE’s detained population climbed sharply in 2025 into early 2026, reaching mid-December figures around 68,440–68,990 and a similar record-high in early January, driven largely by interior arrests and people without criminal convictions [2] [3] [4]. Multiple watchdogs and advocates warn that rapid expansion, reduced oversight and facility transfers increase the risk that noncitizens—and occasionally citizens—are misidentified, detained, or deported, heightening the stakes of not having a clear citizen-detainment metric [6] [3] [2].
3. Known individual cases show the problem exists but are not a census
Reporting and legal records document specific wrongful-detainment cases in 2025–2026—Americans who were detained or nearly deported because of alleged document issues, misidentification, or erroneous records—illustrating the phenomenon but not amounting to a national count [1]. For example, high-profile cases prompted court orders, public advocacy, and local reporting that confirm citizens were directly affected; these instances underscore systemic weaknesses but cannot be summed to produce an overall citizen-detained total absent centralized tracking [1].
4. What available ICE data do and do not show
ICE publishes arrest, removal and detention statistics and provides breakdowns that include “detention by country of citizenship,” but the agency’s publicly posted datasets and rolling two‑week detention snapshots focus on aggregate populations and do not yield a validated, locked figure for the number of U.S. citizens detained nationwide during a given period; ICE itself cautions that its data fluctuate until locked at fiscal-year close [5] [7]. Independent compilations and FOIA-based projects (e.g., Deportation Data Project) have increased transparency for many arrests and detentions but still face gaps and missing identifiers that make isolating citizen detentions across the country infeasible from published sources [8] [5].
5. Bottom line and reporting limits
Based on available reporting and official disclosures, a precise answer to “How many US citizens have been detained by ICE 2025–2026?” cannot be produced because the government does not provide a definitive national count and public datasets and investigative projects lack the necessary, consistently recorded identifiers to compile one [1] [5]. What is clear from multiple independent analyses is that ICE’s overall detention population surged to roughly 68,000–69,000 in late 2025 and early 2026—context that intensifies calls from advocates and some lawmakers for better tracking, oversight, and remedies for misdetentions even as ICE asserts the integrity of its published datasets while noting they remain subject to revision [2] [3] [5].