How many ICE raids occurred in U.S. schools since 2020 by year?

1. What the official data do — and don’t — tell readers

ICE’s published statistics list arrests, detentions and removals but are organized by operational categories and fiscal years and do not publicly provide a tagged, location-level time series that would let researchers sum “raids at schools” by calendar year; ICE confirms its datasets fluctuate until final year‑end locking and the public site does not label actions as “school raids” ^{[1] [2]}. Independent projects that compile ICE releases repackage encounter-level records, but the dataset available through the Deportation Data Project and ICE itself requires location coding and validation to produce a reliable count of school‑site operations — a step not completed in the reporting provided here ^[2].

2. What researchers and journalists have documented about timing and scale

Multiple peer‑reviewed and investigative sources identify a dramatic expansion of local immigration raids during the first two months of 2025, and a Stanford/PNAS analysis and contemporaneous reporting link that surge to measurable school disruption ^{[3] [4]}. Journalistic accounts from late 2024 into 2025 detail concentrated enforcement in regions such as California’s Central Valley and episodic high‑profile events — including ICE activity on Minneapolis campuses in January 2026 — but these accounts catalog incidents and impacts rather than enumerating every operation nationwide by year ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Conflicting official framing and the problem of classification

The Department of Homeland Security issued statements asserting that ICE does not “raid” or target schools, framing operations as conducted with discretion and supervisory approval, which complicates classification of what counts as a “raid” versus an enforcement action near or around a school ^[7]. That official framing contrasts with academic and nonprofit reporting that documents agents entering school perimeters, conducting arrests near school grounds, or creating security perimeters that prevented normal school activities — discrepancies that make any simple tally scientifically precarious without agreed definitions ^{[3] [8]}.

4. Consequences documented even without a numeric tally

Even in the absence of a validated annual count, research has produced robust evidence of impacts: studies found student absences spiked (one study measured a 22% increase in absences where local raids occurred) and education researchers and advocacy groups linked raids and the fear of enforcement to chronic absenteeism, enrolment declines, and trauma in classrooms ^{[4] [3] [8]}. Local reporting and education‑union accounts provide numerous case examples of raids or near‑raids that shuttered schools temporarily or prompted walkouts and community mobilization ^{[9] [10]}.

5. Bottom line and next steps for a definitive answer

The sources reviewed do not permit producing a verified, year‑by‑year count of ICE raids at U.S. schools from 2020 onward: ICE’s public statistics lack location‑tagged counts for “schools,” independent datasets note encounters but require additional coding, and reporting provides incident catalogs and regional case studies rather than a national time series ^{[1] [2] [3]}. To produce the requested annual counts would require (a) clear operational definitions of “raid” vs. “enforcement near a school,” (b) access to encounter‑level ICE records with location descriptors or validated third‑party coding, or (c) aggregation of vetted media and local government incident logs with consistent standards — none of which is present in the documents provided ^{[2] [3] [7]}.