How many arrests by ice in 2025?
Executive summary
Multiple independent news analyses of ICE’s own releases show that arrests in calendar year 2025 numbered in the low hundreds of thousands: The Guardian’s compilation of ICE data reports “more than 328,000” arrests through the year [1], a total that aligns with contemporaneous reporting that ICE was averaging roughly or more than 1,000 arrests per day at different points in 2025 [2].
1. The headline figure: what the major compilations report
The most explicit public figure published by a major outlet and attributed to ICE data says the administration “has arrested more than 328,000” people in 2025 [1], a total presented by The Guardian based on ICE’s biweekly detention and arrest releases [3]; other reporting frames the same phenomenon as daily averages that sum to the same scale — for example, a Prison Policy analysis of ICE/Deportation Data Project data documented “over 1,000 a day” at times during 2025 [2].
2. How those totals are constructed from public ICE releases
News organizations and research groups typically derive annual arrest totals from ICE’s “Initial Book-Ins by Arresting Agency and Month” table and the semi-monthly detention-management releases that ICE publishes; The Guardian has been archiving every two‑week ICE data release and using those figures to construct running totals [3], while researchers use rolling averages to smooth daily volatility and to show trends such as spikes tied to policy shifts [2].
3. Confounding details and why different outlets produce slightly different frames
ICE’s public statistics count “book‑ins” that lead to ICE custody, which can undercount enforcement actions that do not result in entry to ICE detention, and ICE itself warns that data “fluctuate until ‘locked’ at the conclusion of the fiscal year” [4] [3]; analysts also highlight that targeted surges, changes in whether arrests occur in local jails versus community operations, and state‑by‑state cooperation patterns mean daily averages varied widely — Prison Policy found averages that rose from ~350 per day in late January to over 500 per day in August and at times exceeded 1,000 per day in collaborative states [2].
4. Corroborating snapshots inside the year and leaked counts
Specific slices of 2025 reported by ICE and cited by outlets provide supporting snapshots: ICE officials themselves claimed 32,809 arrests between January 20 and March 10, 2025 [5], TRAC and others tracked average daily arrests around 1,007 in early August [6], and multiple outlets documented a steady increase in people held in ICE detention — a related metric that reached more than 65,000–68,000 detained at different points late in the year [7] [1] [8].
5. What the numbers mean and the limits of the record
Taken together, public reporting grounded in ICE’s published tables supports the conclusion that arrests by ICE in calendar-year 2025 totaled at least in the low‑hundreds of thousands (the widely cited “more than 328,000” figure) and that enforcement intensity varied over time and by jurisdiction [1] [2]; however, any precise single tally should be read with caution because ICE’s methodology counts only those arrests that result in book‑ins, the agency’s releases are periodically revised until fiscal year close, and independent analyses use different smoothing and inclusion rules that can raise or lower headline totals [4] [3] [2].