ICE detention expanded rapidly under the Trump administration, both in terms of number of facilities and number of people detained.
Donald Trump’s second term as president brought fundamental changes to immigration enforcement. One key takeaway is that ICE detention has expanded dramatically, both in the number of people detained and in the locations of detention.
Here are five important things to know about immigration detention today.
ICE is detaining record numbers of people
President Trump has launched his promised “mass deportation” campaign in 2025 in earnest with a series of executive orders that pave the way for new policies that expand the strict enforcement and enforcement of immigration laws.
The number of arrests of illegal immigrants has increased dramatically over the past year. Although the pace of deportation flights is increasing, it has not yet caught up. As a result, more people will be detained for longer periods of time.
Nearly 69,000 people were in ICE custody as of January 7, 2026, according to snapshot data provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This number exceeds last year’s number of detainees, which numbered less than 38,000 in early January 2025, before Trump took office.
A report by the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group that promotes fairness in immigration policy, said President Trump’s order for ICE to increase detention of immigrants “to the maximum extent possible” and eliminate discretionary releases caused the increase in the detention population. Another order forcing immigration judges to deny bail to scores of immigrants means more immigrants are fighting cases to remain in the U.S. from detention.
“As the government sends more people to detention centers, fewer people are allowed to leave the detention centers while their cases are being fought,” the report said.
There are more ICE detention centers than ever before.
ICE holds illegal immigrants in a variety of detention facilities. These include privately run, purpose-built immigration detention centers. Temporary tent facility on a military base. county jail. and state prison.
The number of ICE detention centers will explode in 2025. This is not only due to an increase in the number of county jails housing ICE immigrants, but also the emergence of alternative facilities such as Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Or Alligator Alcatraz, a Florida-run restaurant located on the outskirts of Miami.
More recently, the administration has begun considering purchasing large warehouses and converting them into detention centers.
“Now they want something more industrialized, more mechanized,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council and a co-author of the report. “There are some large, mega-facilities that can accommodate tens of thousands of people. It’s unclear whether that will happen.”
According to ICE data, there were 107 detention centers holding immigrants in early January 2025, but by the end of the year, that number had nearly doubled to 212.
Records of people detained without criminal charges skyrocket
The number of people in ICE custody without a criminal record increased by 2,450% on a given day, according to a report by the American Immigration Council.
Other researchers have also highlighted this trend.
“I’ve never seen incarceration numbers this high,” said Austin Kocher, an immigration researcher at Syracuse University. “The increase in immigration detention over the past four months is almost entirely due to the detention of people with no criminal record.”
According to a Justice Department opinion released in June, the Trump administration considers anyone who crosses the border illegally to be a “criminal,” breaking from the practice under Democratic and Republican administrations. The opinion suggests that “immigrants who evade inspection are like prisoners who flee from federal custody.”
Death toll at highest level since coronavirus pandemic
More people in immigration detention means more people dying in custody.
The agency announced 15 deaths between Jan. 23 and Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2025. A November Congressional memo puts the number of deaths in ICE custody so far in the calendar year at 25, and the Guardian news organization, compiled from various sources, puts the number of deaths in 2025 at 32.
The problem of substandard care in immigrant detention facilities is a long-standing problem, predating the second Trump administration.
A 2024 ACLU report examined deaths in custody during the three years between the first Trump and Biden administrations and found that 95% of deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented with proper precautions. The report cited “defective internal oversight mechanisms and failures to provide adequate medical and mental health care” at ICE detention sites.
ICE has more money to expand immigration detention
Congress approved $45 billion in funding to expand ICE detention, on top of the $4 billion the agency has already approved.
The annual budget is nearly $15 billion, twice the annual budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to a report by the American Immigration Council.
The report estimates that with additional funding, ICE could have enough detention beds to hold 135,000 people at any given time. The United States hasn’t held so many people outside the criminal justice system since the internment of people of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War II.
Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions, said ICE needs additional funding to improve processing “to move people through the system” and prevent them from being released from detention.
“They don’t want to have to release people because there’s no space for them,” she said.
Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY. Contact him at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
