What is a summary of ice’s actions in the last year
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Over the last year ICE dramatically escalated enforcement: arrests and deportations surged under an administration-led mass-deportation agenda while detention capacity and use expanded rapidly, even as oversight fell and deaths in custody rose to levels not seen in decades [1] [2] [3]. That expansion paired aggressive public messaging and internal shifts—new surveillance procurements, increased enforcement flights, and personnel shake-ups—against growing legal challenges and state and local resistance [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. Enforcement numbers and claimed successes
ICE and DHS framed 2025 as a year of intensified removals and targeted arrests, touting large raids and arrests of people with serious criminal convictions while reporting high totals of arrests and removals—claims mirrored in agency press releases describing the roundup of “worst of the worst” offenders [8] [9] and in public tallies that put arrests and deportations in 2025 in the hundreds of thousands [1] [10].
2. Mass deportation machinery: flights, expedited removal, and transfers
Operationally, the agency increased air operations and expedited removals, with independent trackers documenting record numbers of immigration enforcement flights—September alone logged at least 1,464 flights—and reports that the administration expanded use of expedited removal and domestic transfers to move people quickly through the system [5] [11].
3. Detention surge and collapsing oversight
Detention capacity ballooned—estimates show roughly a 75 percent rise in people held during 2025 and facilities increased by over a hundred sites—with ICE relying on new and ad hoc sites including tent camps; at the same time published inspections fell sharply, with a reported 36.25 percent drop in Office of Detention Oversight reports even as detention populations and reported deaths rose [2] [12].
4. Rising deaths and accountability questions
Human-rights and investigative reporting documented a grim toll: 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the highest annual total in more than two decades, prompting scrutiny over medical care, sanitation, and transparency inside an expanding detention system [3]. ICE’s own site posted at least one detainee death notice late in the year, underscoring agency-public reporting of fatalities [9].
5. New tech, surveillance buying spree, and civil liberties concerns
Beyond beds and flights, ICE moved aggressively into digital surveillance: civil-society researchers and privacy advocates report new contracts in 2025 for location tracking, social-media monitoring, facial recognition, spyware, and phone-surveillance tools—part of what the Electronic Frontier Foundation called a “surveillance shopping spree” tied to a greatly enlarged DHS budget [4].
6. State and local pushback, shifting enforcement sources, and political consequences
Local politics shaped outcomes: state and local limits on cooperation constrained parts of the deportation plan and altered where arrests occurred, with local jails and transfers playing an amplified role even as some jurisdictions resisted ICE’s community raids; political battles and electoral messaging reflected tensions over deputizing local police and the role of sheriffs [7] [6].
7. Legal fights, protests, and competing narratives
The enforcement ramp-up provoked lawsuits and mass protests: civil libertarians and immigrant-rights groups framed the year as a sharp turn toward harsher, less accountable immigration policing and sued over detention and protest-related practices, while ICE and DHS emphasized removals of convicted criminals and public-safety rationales—two competing narratives that informed media coverage and public debate [13] [8].
8. Limits of available reporting and outstanding questions
Public accounts and watchdog data converge on broad trends—more arrests, more flights, more detention, fewer inspections, and more deaths—but differ in emphasis and methodology, and ICE’s internal data corrections and changed categorization practices complicate precise comparisons; where sources do not provide verifiable detail (for example, exact program budgets for each surveillance contract), reporting limits prevent definitive accounting [7] [4].