How have ICE arrests and removals trended annually by immigration enforcement priority since 2010?
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Executive summary
From 2010 through the mid-2020s, ICE arrests and removals have moved with policy shifts and capacity limits: arrests rose and fell with changing enforcement priorities, while removals fell sharply after 2019 and then rebounded under different administrations — for example, arrests increased from 133,541 in 2019 to 154,204 in 2022 while removals declined from 276,122 in 2019 to 81,547 in 2022 (U.S. GAO) [1]. Federal and DHS public dashboards and third‑party trackers show that 2024–2025 saw renewed intensity in interior arrests and monthly removal spikes tied to new policy and operational pushes (ICE dashboards; Guardian US reporting) [2] [3].
1. Enforcement priorities drove the trends
ICE and DHS make clear that enforcement numbers are driven by stated priorities and limited capacity. DHS and ICE explicitly say officers prioritize based on agency priorities, funding and capacity, and use intelligence‑driven targeting rather than blanket interior enforcement (ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations statistics) [2]. GAO traced policy changes that materially altered who ICE targeted: from broader enforcement guidance in 2019 through January 2021, to more narrowly defined priorities in September 2021 that focused on national security, public safety and border security — a change that coincided with measurable shifts in arrests and removals [1].
2. Arrests and removals diverged after 2019
National audits and ICE’s own reporting reveal a divergence: arrests increased modestly between 2019 and 2022 (133,541 to 154,204), while removals plunged dramatically (276,122 to 81,547) over the same period (GAO) [1]. That divergence reflects a mixture of policy changes, asylum and immigration‑court backlogs, logistical limits such as detention bed counts, and procedural choices — not simply a uniform ramping up or down of removals [1] [4].
3. Data quality and counting rules complicate year‑to‑year comparison
Independent reviewers warn that ICE’s public figures understate or at least complicate true volumes. GAO found ICE’s public reporting understates total detained people because some are first booked into temporary facilities that ICE excludes from its detention counts [1]. DHS’s OHSS statistical tables also emphasize that the unit of measure is “events” and that people can be counted multiple times across encounters, arrests and detentions — a reporting practice that makes straight comparisons across years and datasets misleading unless methodology is matched [5].
4. External projects and journalism fill gaps but vary in scope
Third‑party projects like the Deportation Data Project aggregate and process ICE releases to enable long‑term trend analysis, but they note dataset gaps — for example, recent ICE releases omitted reliable removals and encounters tables due to potential errors [6]. News organizations such as The Guardian have been archiving ICE’s biweekly detention releases to track short‑term changes in 2025 and beyond, providing granular monthly views that official annual tables can obscure [3].
5. Policy reversals in 2025 changed the trajectory again
Multiple outlets report a major operational intensification in 2025 tied to new administration policy: trackers and media documented large increases in arrests, expanded expedited removal use, and higher monthly removal tallies in mid‑2025 — including reporting of single‑month spikes and claims of substantially increased removals through September 2025 [7] [8] [3]. ICE public dashboards through December 31, 2024, promised more granular, quarterly updates going forward, but independent reporting indicates 2025 saw notable operational escalations [2] [3].
6. Criminality as a filter — and contested claims about “worst first”
ICE frames interior enforcement as prioritizing criminal convictions and national‑security threats, and public releases note frequent arrests of people with criminal histories such as DUI, drug possession and assault [2]. DHS press releases and some trackers emphasize arrests of people described as “the worst of the worst,” a framing that aligns with a “criminal‑first” narrative [9]. Advocacy groups and journalists, however, document broader sweeps, expedited removal use, and courthouse arrest tactics that critics say push non‑criminal cases into faster deportation pathways [10] [8].
7. What this means for interpreting annual trends
Available sources show that annual trends are not a pure measure of “more” or “less” enforcement: they reflect shifting policy priorities, counting methodologies, detention capacity, court backlogs, and administrative choices to use expedited removal or dismissals to channel cases. GAO cautions that removals and detention counts in public reporting changed dramatically after 2019 and that ICE’s reporting practices can undercount detained individuals, making multi‑year comparisons sensitive to methodological changes [1] [11] [5].
Limitations and next steps: public dashboards (ICE and OHSS), GAO audits, Migration Policy Institute explainers, and independent archives (Deportation Data Project, The Guardian) together provide the clearest picture available in these sources, but gaps remain — notably inconsistent removals tables in recent ICE releases and the counting of repeat events — so careful, methodology‑aware use of the datasets is essential before drawing firm year‑to‑year conclusions [2] [1] [6] [5] [3].