Despite the high-profile U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Minnesota, ICE arrests were down slightly in January compared to December, according to new data.
Immigrant detention nationwide also reached a new high in January, and a growing percentage — nearly three-quarters — of people in detention have no criminal convictions.
ICE arrested 36,579 people in January compared with December (37,842); the numbers haven’t changed much since October (36,621), according to new estimates from a Syracuse University professor.
The number of people in immigration detention reached 70,766 as of Jan. 24, a new high, according to a different report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, also at Syracuse University.
The number in detention has gone up steadily from about 40,000 at the start of the second Trump administration, and the latest number is the largest since the organization, known as TRAC, began tracking immigrant detention in 2019.
Of those detainees 74.2%, or 52,504, had no criminal convictions, up from 70.4% in June.
“Since the summer, nearly all of the growth in ICE detention has come from people without criminal convictions or charges — an area of tremendous sustained growth that contradicts the Trump administration’s narrative that they are focused on the worst of the worst,” Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University who researches immigration enforcement, wrote in a substack posting.
Kocher is a former researcher for TRAC but is no longer associated with the organization and created estimates of monthly arrests based on detention check-ins.
Detention facilities in Texas had the largest number of detainees, 18,684, followed by Louisiana (8,207), California (6,422), Florida (5,187) and Georgia (4,178) as of Jan. 24.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at [email protected].
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Source: Immigration detention passed 70,000 in January • Wisconsin Examiner
