The Guardian has reviewed figures from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since Trump's inauguration. Trump campaigned on mass deportation, and his administration has reshaped immigration enforcement. The Guardian is tracking the number of people arrested, detained and deported using data published every two weeks by ICE.
Data Sources and Methodology
ICE usually publishes detention statistics for the current fiscal year every two weeks. The Guardian has archived each release since January 2025 and received older releases from the Vera Institute for Justice. The number of people arrested, detained and deported during each reporting period was calculated by scraping data from each release and comparing totals with previous releases.
The figures for arrests, detentions and deportations do not have a direct one-to-one connection. People can be arrested but not booked into detention, and deported without first being booked into detention.
Specific Data Tables Used
ICE arrest data comes from the ICE Initial Book-Ins by Arresting Agency and Month table. Arrest figures may be an undercount because ICE reports only arrests that result in someone entering ICE detention. Detention totals come from the ICE Currently Detained by Criminality and Arresting Agency table. Deportations come from the ICE Removals table.
Data Visualization Notes
The Guardian US did not visualize the first data release of FY2025, which includes carryover data from the previous fiscal year and more than two weeks of arrests and deportations. Due to a change in the frequency of ICE data reporting, small errors were introduced into the chart annotations. Before the government shutdown in late 2025, data was visualized in two-week increments; after, ICE started releasing data inconsistently. The Guardian has redesigned the charts to match the changing release schedule.
