Please give me data on how active ICE was under the Biden administration
Executive summary
Between February 2021 and December 2024, ICE carried out substantial interior enforcement—recording just over a half‑million interior arrests—but removals and detention practices under the Biden administration showed both declines in some metrics and continued high levels of activity in others, with independent analysts and advocacy groups documenting divergences between agency practice and White House enforcement priorities [1] [2] [3].
1. Interior arrests: half a million-plus during most of Biden’s term
ICE’s own enforcement dashboard reports that between February 2021 (the first full month of the Biden presidency) and December 2024, the agency made just over 500,000 “interior arrests” , a primary measure of ICE activity within the country rather than at the border [1].
2. Detainers: nearly 300,000 issued in FY2021–Q1 FY2024, and rising monthly use
Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) analysis of internal ICE records shows that from FY2021 through the first quarter of FY2024 the agency issued just under 300,000 detainers and, since February 2023, has regularly issued more than 10,000 detainers per month—signals of sustained interior enforcement even where formal detention or removal did not always follow [4].
3. Removals and detention: lower removals alongside continued detentions in many cases
Advocacy and tracking groups report that ICE removals fell compared with the end of the prior administration, and ICE’s fiscal‑year detention and removal statistics indicate removals declined during Biden’s term relative to late‑Trump period figures; different trackers produce varying counts of removals that overlap with transitions between administrations, complicating direct year‑to‑year comparisons [2] [5].
4. Enforcement priorities vs. execution: a third of actions outside stated priorities
The Biden administration issued interim enforcement priorities in early 2021 and finalized guidance in late 2021; FOIA‑based analyses by the American Immigration Council and partners found roughly one‑third of ICE enforcement actions in 2021 targeted people who did not meet those stated priority categories, leading the groups to conclude ICE frequently arrested and removed people outside the administration’s stated framework [6] [3] [7].
5. Political and institutional disputes shape how “activity” is counted and portrayed
Republican committee statements and later watchdog reporting emphasized steep drops in removals of convicted criminals under Biden and framed that as evidence of restrained enforcement, while other analysts and Cato‑linked commentary argue ICE activity increased relative to post‑Trump lows—highlighting that partisan actors selectively emphasize arrests, detainers, removals, or releases depending on the narrative they advance [8] [9].
6. What the raw numbers don’t resolve: context, local variation, and agency practice
Available records and independent FOIA analyses illuminate scale but leave important questions open: data dashboards start in October 2020 and end in December 2024, making some cross‑administration baseline comparisons tricky; enforcement varied across field offices (New York, Chicago and Texas flagged for high shares of “other” priority actions), and agency guidance, judicial rulings, and inconsistent local implementation all affected outcomes in ways raw tallies do not capture [1] [3] [4].
7. Bottom line for “how active”: active, but constrained and contested
Measured by interior arrests and detainers, ICE under Biden remained an active law‑enforcement agency—over 500,000 interior arrests and nearly 300,000 detainers in the early years of the administration—but removals fell in some measures and enforcement often diverged from the administration’s stated priorities, leaving a mixed picture shaped by policy memos, court challenges, FOIA revelations, and partisan interpretation [1] [4] [6] [3].