How many arrests have ice made so far in 2026

1. What the public numbers do show: detention and local tallies, not a national arrest total

ICE’s published detention snapshot shows 68,990 people in custody as of early January 2026—a useful indicator of enforcement scale but not a direct count of arrests during 2026 itself, since detention is a stock and arrests are a flow ^{[2] [5]}. Independent trackers and advocacy groups also report high arrest activity in recent months—TRAC/Deportation Data Project and related analyses describe ICE making “over 1,000 a day” in some periods and show tens of thousands of bookings into detention in months like October 2025—but these data sets cover differing time spans and mixes of CBP/ICE actions, making them unreliable to sum into a clean 2026 total from the material provided ^{[4] [6]}.

2. Agency messaging versus external analyses: dozens, hundreds, or thousands—depending on the claim

Department of Homeland Security and ICE press releases highlight multiple, high-profile operation tallies and repeatedly assert large arrest counts—including regionally specific claims such as more than 2,000 arrests in Minnesota since an “Operation Metro Surge” began and frequent “worst of the worst” roundup headlines—yet these are operation-specific snapshots and do not amount to an agency-wide 2026 cumulative arrest number available in the documents here ^{[7] [3] [8] [9] [10] [11]}. Conversely, research and advocacy groups emphasize different metrics—such as the dramatic growth in people detained without criminal convictions—underscoring that what ICE counts and what outside analysts spotlight are not always the same things ^{[12] [13] [6]}.

3. Why a single national arrest count is hard to produce from these sources

The reporting demonstrates three practical obstacles to producing a single 2026 arrest total from the available material: ICE’s public statistics page and press briefings report different measures (arrests, removals, detention population) and are updated on different cadences ^[1]; independent projects and media use heterogeneous inputs (local jail pickups, CBP arrests, ICE bookings) that are not mutually exclusive and sometimes overlap ^{[4] [6]}; and DHS press releases repeatedly present selective operation totals or percentage claims (e.g., “70% of arrests are criminal aliens”) that are contested by outside analyses showing a majority of people in detention have no convictions—illustrating a data-definition gap that prevents a clean aggregation ^{[9] [14] [12] [6]}.

4. What can be reliably stated from the sources provided

The materials show clear escalation: ICE’s detained population reached a record-high near 69,000 in early January 2026 ^{[2] [5]}, independent trackers report thousands of arrests and bookings in recent months with patterns of over 1,000 arrests per day in some analyses ^{[4] [6]}, and DHS continued to publish repeated operation-level arrest tallies in January 2026 ^{[3] [8] [9] [10] [11]}. None of these sources, however, publishes or aggregates a single nationwide total of ICE arrests "so far in 2026" that can be cited without additional ICE/Deportation Data Project/TRAC aggregation beyond what the provided documents contain ^{[1] [4] [15]}.

5. Bottom line and next steps for a precise number

Based on the documents supplied, an exact total of ICE arrests in calendar-year 2026 cannot be calculated here because the sources lack a consolidated, authoritative count for that period and mix different metrics ^{[1] [4] [2]}. To obtain a precise cumulative figure, the appropriate next steps would be to consult ICE’s up-to-date Arrests and Enforcement Operations tables (ICE statistics/ERO datasets) and cross-check with TRAC/Deportation Data Project daily arrest tallies and DHS operation announcements to reconcile overlaps and definitions—none of which is encapsulated as a single 2026 total in the provided reporting ^{[1] [4] [3]}.