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Fact check: What were the total ICE arrests in 2021 under the Biden administration?
Executive Summary
The best available count from the material supplied shows ICE reported 74,082 administrative arrests in Fiscal Year 2021, a figure presented in ICE’s FY2021 Annual Report and reiterated in related ICE releases; the report also highlights 12,025 arrests of individuals convicted of an aggravated felony in that same fiscal year [1] [2]. Alternative datasets referenced (DHS Office of Immigration Statistics) cover related enforcement actions and broader metrics for 2021 but do not contradict the ICE-published administrative arrest totals cited above [3]. Key context about conviction status and comparative trends is uneven across the supplied sources.
1. A clear ICE headline: what the agency reported for 2021
ICE’s Fiscal Year 2021 Annual Report states that ICE conducted 74,082 administrative arrests of noncitizens during FY2021 and that among those arrests 12,025 involved individuals convicted of an aggravated felony, a number the report notes was nearly double the prior fiscal year total [1]. This ICE figure is the primary numerical claim in the supplied materials and appears again in ICE communications praising enforcement aligned with their priorities [2]. The dates on the ICE materials are March 2022, situating the agency’s accounting as its post‑fiscal year summary for FY2021 [1] [2].
2. Government statistical context: DHS enforcement reports do not contradict the ICE number
The DHS Office of Immigration Statistics’ 2021 Annual Flow/Enforcement Actions material is cited as a complementary source that reports on apprehensions, administrative arrests, inadmissibility determinations, and removal proceedings for 2021 [3]. That DHS product covers overlapping but not identical measures and is useful for situating ICE’s administrative arrests within the broader federal immigration enforcement picture, though the supplied entry does not restate or revise ICE’s 74,082 total [3]. The DHS entry is dated December 2022 and serves as a confirmatory contextual dataset rather than a competing count [3].
3. What the supplied later reporting and analyses say — gaps and emphasis
Later supplied analyses and press pieces in 2024–2025 focus on different aspects of ICE enforcement, such as the composition of arrestees by criminal history and shifts during later parts of the Biden administration, but none of those later pieces provide an alternate total for ICE arrests in 2021 [4] [5] [6]. One 2025 news piece emphasizes that between October 2022 and November 2024 78% of people arrested had a misdemeanor conviction or no conviction, a statistic that contextualizes later enforcement priorities but does not change the FY2021 administrative arrest count [4]. The supplied Congressional and Federal Register excerpts likewise do not supply a different FY2021 arrest total [5] [6].
4. Reconciling phrasing: “administrative arrests” vs. broader “ICE arrests”
The ICE report explicitly uses the term “administrative arrests” to describe the 74,082 figure, while DHS reporting catalogs multiple enforcement actions that can be defined differently across publications [1] [3]. Terminology matters: “administrative arrests” refers to noncriminal immigration enforcement actions executed by ICE officers and special agents, which can be reported separately from criminal arrests or border apprehensions counted by other DHS components. The materials supplied do not indicate a different total when broader or narrower definitions are applied to 2021, so the ICE administrative figure remains the best available direct count in these sources [1] [3].
5. Trends and comparisons called out by ICE — what’s highlighted and omitted
ICE’s FY2021 narrative stresses that agents focused on national security, public safety, and border security priorities and that arrests of aggravated-felony convicts rose sharply compared with the prior year [2] [1]. That emphasis frames FY2021 as a year of selective prioritization, yet the supplied materials omit detailed breakdowns by offense type beyond the aggravated-felony subset, geographic distribution, and comparisons with other enforcement components. The DHS 2021 enforcement summary can fill some of that gap conceptually, but the supplied snippet does not supply the granular tables that would allow deeper disaggregation [3].
6. Reliability and potential agendas in the supplied sources
The primary numeric claim comes from ICE’s own Annual Report [1] [2], and the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics is a separate statistical office intended to provide independent tabulations [3]. Both sources carry institutional perspectives: ICE’s report presents enforcement accomplishments and priorities, while DHS analytics provide broader enforcement context; later media and policy pieces (2024–2025) emphasize narrative angles such as criminal-history composition of arrestees or policy shifts but do not dispute the FY2021 total [4] [5]. Readers should note these different institutional roles when weighing emphasis and presentation [1] [3] [4].
7. Bottom line and recommended next steps for precision
Based on the supplied materials, the authoritative reported total for ICE administrative arrests in FY2021 is 74,082, with 12,025 arrests of aggravated-felony convicts, as presented in ICE’s FY2021 report and reiterated in ICE communications [1] [2]. For further precision—such as reconciling administrative arrests with other DHS counts, obtaining offense‑level breakdowns, or seeing geographic and demographic detail—consult the full DHS Office of Immigration Statistics 2021 tables and ICE’s annexes or data downloads, which the supplied summaries indicate exist though they were not reproduced here [3] [1].