How many people were detained by ICE each year under Obama versus Trump (2010–2025)?
Executive summary
Publicly available sources provided do not contain a complete, year-by-year table of how many people ICE detained in each calendar or fiscal year from 2010 through 2025; instead the record in these sources is a patchwork of endpoint snapshots, fiscal-year removal totals, and reporting on detention caseload surges. What can be said with confidence from the documents at hand is that detention levels and removals both varied across administrations, with removals peaking under Obama (notably FY2012) and detention populations spiking sharply during the second Trump administration’s first year while Biden-era detention levels rose relative to the tail end of Trump’s first term (end‑of‑term snapshots and semi‑monthly ICE data summarized by TRAC and ICE) [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. What the reporting actually allows: removals versus detained population
Most sources supplied focus on removals (deportations) or episodic counts of people in custody rather than a continuous, year‑by‑year detained‑headcount series for 2010–2025, so any precise annual detainee table cannot be compiled from these documents alone; ICE publishes arrest, removal and detention statistics on its site but those data are presented in formats that require extraction and aggregation (ICE’s statistics portal) [4]. The best concrete historical fact in the set is that removals under Obama reached a peak in FY2012 (more than 407,000 removals) — a removals figure, not a detention headcount — which TRAC and other outlets cite when comparing administrations [1].
2. Snapshots: end‑of‑term and surge counts that the sources do report
Available snapshots show that ICE’s detained population at the end of Trump’s first term was unusually low — 14,195 adults reported detained as the administration left office, a number TRAC attributes in part to Covid protocols — and that by January 12, 2025 the Biden administration’s detained population stood at about 39,703 adults, roughly 2.5 times that late‑Trump number [2]. Separate reporting documents and investigative aggregators note much larger detention numbers after Trump’s 2025 inauguration: by mid‑December 2025 ICE was holding roughly 68,440 people, a record monthly level reported in The Guardian [5], and semi‑monthly ICE postings compiled by TRAC show detention counts in the tens of thousands through 2025 [3] [6].
3. Trends and context: what “more” or “less” really means
Taken together, the sources depict a changing enforcement posture rather than a static per‑year detainee total: removals under Obama were high in several years (FY2012 peak cited) even as detention practices and the size of the in‑custody population fluctuated with policy, court orders and public‑health constraints [1] [2]. The early months and then the later months of the 2025 Trump administration produced intensive arrest and detention drives that quickly pushed ICE custody counts to record levels by December 2025 [5] [3], while reporting from TRAC and independent analysts warns that semi‑monthly ICE totals mix periods and require careful subtraction to attribute removals or detained counts to a particular presidential period [6] [3].
4. Competing claims and data caveats
Political claims about totals complicate interpretation: the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump White House issued high aggregate deportation and “left the country” figures in 2025 that analysts and TRAC critique as mixing fiscal segments and administrative periods, with independent researchers recalculating lower, IS‑sourced ICE removal totals for parts of 2025 [7] [8] [6]. Journalists and watchdogs therefore rely on ICE’s semi‑monthly detention spreadsheets and TRAC’s reconciliations to build more accurate attributions, but the documents provided here do not include a clean annual detainee series for 2010–2025 [4] [6] [3].
5. Bottom line for the original question
The available sources do not permit a definitive year‑by‑year listing of “how many people were detained by ICE each year under Obama versus Trump (2010–2025).” What can be stated from these sources is: Obama‑era removals included the FY2012 peak (~407,000 removals) rather than a detention headcount [1]; detention caseloads were relatively low at the end of Trump’s first term (≈14,195 adults) and rose under Biden to ~39,703 by January 12, 2025 [2]; and detention reached record high snapshots in late 2025 under Trump’s second administration (≈68,440 in mid‑December 2025) amid a surge of arrests and removals and contentious official claims about totals [5] [3] [6]. To produce a complete annual detainee table would require extracting and reconciling ICE’s raw semi‑monthly detention spreadsheets (ICE’s statistics page) across fiscal years and administrations — a task beyond what the supplied excerpts permit [4] [6].