How many refugees have been detained and transferred from other U.S. states to Texas since 2025?

1. What the sources actually measure — and what they do not

Federal and independent datasets cited in recent reporting track ICE and CBP custody populations, interstate transfers, and flight movements, but they mix categories (inadmissible individuals, asylum-seekers, refugees, lawful permanent residents and others) and often lack identifiers that would allow researchers to identify “refugees” moved from one state to another, a definitional and data gap repeatedly noted in public summaries (CBP custody stats explain the mixed categories ^{[4] [5]}; ICE/detention reporting shows interstate transfers without refugee-specific disaggregation ^{[1] [2]}).

2. Documented transfers into Texas facilities and examples that matter

Reporting establishes that Texas has been a major destination for transfers and processing: children and families were moved to Dilley, Texas, in waves during revived family-detention operations (Marshall Project reporting on transfers to Dilley) ^[6], Fort Bliss and other Texas sites have been used as intake, shelter and deportation staging points (The Guardian on Fort Bliss) ^[7], and ICE’s domestic transport operations — tracked by aviation monitors — show routine flights moving detainees between regions and into Texas facilities (Human Rights First/ICE Flight Monitor) ^[3].

3. Scale signals but not a definitive refugee count

Multiple sources point to substantially increased detention and interstate movement under the current enforcement surge — ICE detainee population spikes and programmatic expansion are documented (ICE/detention reporting and analyses report rising detention totals and interstate transfers) ^{[1] [2]} — and watchdog researchers have captured examples of mass movements, such as a mid-September 2025 declaration describing an “entire plane” of 131 Chicago arrestees flown to El Paso for processing ^[8]. However, those signals are aggregate or case-based and do not equal a vetted count of refugees transferred from other states into Texas since 2025 because the datasets do not reliably label status or state-of-origin transfers at that level ^{[8] [4] [1]}.

4. Why a precise number is unavailable in public reporting

Three structural limits recur across the sources: public custody and transfer statistics aggregate different legal statuses together and so cannot be filtered to “refugee” reliably (CBP custody definitions and ICE reporting practice) ^{[4] [5] [1]}; datasets and investigative monitors suffer missing identifiers that block matching an individual’s origin state to a later facility in Texas (Prison Policy and Deportation Data Project limitations noted) ^[8]; and advocacy and watchdog flight trackers document movements but do not maintain an official, status-verified roster of refugees moved across states (Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor methodology and caveats) ^[3].

5. Best available conclusion and next steps for a definitive answer

Based on the sources, it is certain that thousands of noncitizens — including children, asylum-seekers and detained immigrants — have been transferred into Texas facilities since 2025, and that interstate transfers and deportation staging in Texas have increased markedly (Marshall Project on children moved to Dilley; ICE detention growth and private facility use; Fort Bliss reporting) ^{[6] [1] [7]}. None of the cited reporting, however, provides a verifiable, refugee-specific tally of people detained and moved from other U.S. states into Texas since 2025 ^{[4] [3]}. To produce a defensible numeric answer would require access to nonpublic ICE/CBP case-level data with legal-status coding and origin-state fields or a formal data release from DHS expressly tabulating refugees transferred into Texas since 2025 — data that the cited sources indicate are not publicly available ^{[1] [8] [3]}.