Which states have seen the largest increase in ICE agents per capita since 2020?
Executive summary
Publicly available reporting and agency statements document a large nationwide increase in ICE personnel since 2024–2025, and they point to concentrated enforcement activity in a handful of states — chiefly Texas, Florida, California, Georgia and Louisiana — but none of the provided sources publish a verified, state-by-state tally of ICE agents per capita since 2020, so a definitive ranking of “largest increase in ICE agents per capita” by state cannot be produced from the materials at hand [1] [2] [3]. The evidence instead permits identifying where enforcement footprint and arrests rose most sharply and where local policies limited ICE activity, while acknowledging that agency hiring claims and advocacy reports reflect competing agendas [1] [3] [4].
1. Where the footprint looks largest — arrest and detention surges point to hotspots
Multiple reports show that ICE arrest activity and detention use spiked in 2025 and are concentrated in Texas, Florida and California, with Georgia and Louisiana repeatedly named as high-enforcement states; these patterns strongly suggest those states have absorbed a disproportionate share of ICE’s expanded operational footprint even if agent headcount by state is not published in the sources provided [5] [3] [6]. Independent trackers and media coverage note record detention totals and large facilities in Texas and Georgia, reinforcing that those states are enforcement hubs [7] [6] [8].
2. What the agency itself claims — a nationwide doubling of personnel
ICE and Department of Homeland Security communications state the agency more than doubled its workforce in 2025, adding roughly 12,000 officers and agents and growing from about 10,000 to over 22,000 personnel, and announcing broad nationwide deployment of many of those hires [1] [2]. That announcement establishes a substantial national increase in ICE capacity since 2020, but the press release does not break the new workforce down into state-level per-capita changes that would answer the user’s question directly [1].
3. State policy matters — cooperation or resistance shapes measured impact
Analysts and policy reports emphasize that state and local choices — from formal deputization of local officers to sanctuary-style limits on cooperation — strongly influence where ICE can operate and how many arrests occur; states that deputized local staff (Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia) experienced higher arrest volumes, while states that restricted cooperation (Illinois, New York, Oregon) saw suppressed ICE arrests despite the national hiring surge [3]. UCLA and other research also document large state variations in arrests that reflect local statutes and policing practices rather than only federal staffing levels [9] [3].
4. Local surges and one-off deployments complicate per-capita accounting
High-profile, concentrated deployments — for example the Minneapolis surge sending roughly 2,000 federal agents to a metro area — show that temporary transfers can dramatically change enforcement intensity in particular places without necessarily meaning a permanent per-capita increase in resident ICE agents for that state [10]. Media reporting of aggressive raids and rapid rises in arrests in cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis underscores operational surges that outsize typical per-capita measures yet are not captured as steady-state, statewide staffing numbers in the available sources [11] [4].
5. Competing narratives and hidden agendas in the sources
The DHS/ICE announcements frame hiring as a public-safety success and national rollout (self-promotional; p1_s6), while advocacy groups, academic researchers and press outlets emphasize civil liberties, local resistance, and the geographic skew of arrests [3] [4] [9]. These differing framings reflect political aims — the administration’s incentive to show programmatic success and local advocates’ incentive to highlight harms — and they complicate attempts to convert increased nationwide hiring into a transparent, state-by-state per-capita comparison using only the supplied material [1] [3].
6. Bottom line and data limitation
The sources consistently identify Texas, Florida, California, Georgia and Louisiana as the states with the largest observed increases in ICE enforcement activity and detention presence, and they confirm a nationwide doubling of ICE personnel in 2025, but none provides a verified dataset of ICE agents per capita by state since 2020; therefore it is not possible from the provided reporting to produce a definitive ranked list of states with the largest per-capita increase in ICE agents [5] [3] [1] [2]. To generate that ranking would require DOJ/DHS internal deployment spreadsheets, state-level assignment rosters, or a granular ICE staffing breakdown not included in these sources; absent those, the best-supported conclusion is that enforcement and detention growth concentrated in the named hotspot states implies they likely saw the largest operational increases, though the precise per-capita agent increase by state remains unverified by the available documentation [3] [7] [6].