Immigration Detention Statistics: A Retrospective and a Look Forward

Published Feb 21, 2025

As of January 12, 2025, at the end of the four years of the Biden administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained 39,703 adults in more than 100 facilities across the United States. This marked the highest level of detention during the four years of Biden’s presidency.[1]

To put that number in perspective, ICE reported that 14,195 adults were detained at the end of the Trump administration, a figure impacted by Covid health protocols. Based on the bi-monthly data ICE posted on its website, the number of immigrants ICE detained generally grew over the entire Biden presidency and ended at a figure over two and a half times the detention numbers at the end of the Trump presidency.

Figure 1 shows detention daily trends in numbers reported as detained from May 4, 2019, when this reporting series begins through January 12, 2025. During the Biden presidency detention levels rose during FY 2021 from 14,195 to 22,129. Detained immigrants continued to rise to 25,134 at the end of FY 2022, and 32,743 by the end of FY 2023. Detention levels continued to rise to over 37,000 by the end of FY 2024 and continued rising to 39,703 on January 12, 2025, at the last available report at the end of his presidency.

Where is ICE detaining people?

In a trend that has been consistent for many years, ICE detention has concentrated in particular facilities, most of which are in southwestern or southeastern states in the US. Figure 2 shows the twenty largest facilities as of the final statistical release made during the Biden administration. Altogether, these twenty facilities hold 59 percent of ICE’s detained population on any given day.

Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi, had the largest detainee population at a single facility at the end of the Biden presidency. Almost one in twenty individuals held by ICE were detained in Natchez. Among other large detention centers, South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas and Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia both held more than 1,500 adults each.

During the presidential campaign of 2020, President Biden promised to close private immigration detention facilities. While some facilities did in fact shut down, other factors apart from whether they were run by for-profit companies often figured larger in the decision. For years, the privately-run South Texas Family Residential Center, located in Dilley, Texas, held the most detainees in the country, peaking at 1,630 detainees in December 2022, before closing in the Summer of 2024. Two publicly-operated detention center closures include Berks County Residential Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania and Etowah County Jail, in Gadsden, Alabama.

For-profit immigrant detention facilities still hold the vast majority of individuals detained by ICE. As of January 2025, private companies managed all twenty of the top twenty private detention centers. All told, 86 percent of ICE detainees were held in facilities run by for-profit entities. Table 1 shows the detention centers that had one of the top twenty average daily populations (ADP) as of January 6, 2025.

The Biden administration went as far as pushing against detention center closures in some cases. In 2023, the administration sided with private prison operator CoreCivic in a legal case against the closure of Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, a private facility located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The facility did not close but has since doubled in the number of detainees, now holding 270 people as of early January 2025.

ICE Detention Statistics Reporting Going Forward

ICE is required to publish detention statistics bi-monthly by provisions included in its annual appropriations which have added more required statistics as time went on. ICE published data that was subsequently found to be erroneous and out of date early in the Biden administration.[2] More recently, the update released in February, 2025 included a blank value in one of the “Alternatives to Detention” table and several other numbers which may have been transposed. Will these practices continue?

For example, it will be worth watching whether ICE includes details for individuals detained at the facility in Guantanamo. Reporting suggests that ICE has made it difficult for migrant detainees to contact legal representation while detained in Guantanamo.[3] Will this suspension of typical practices extend to data reporting?

Already, other types of data reporting have been affected. In the first update released under the Trump administration, ICE did not release a table on Transgender Detainees by ICE Area of Responsibility. The detention statistics update released on January 16 included this table, while the update released on February 3, does not. Thus far, no change has been noted in ICE’s reporting of segregation of individuals from “Vulnerable & Special Populations,” another subcategory of data reporting that ICE released throughout the Biden presidency.

At present, ICE has continued to publish detention statistics since the beginning of Trump’s second term as president. This is legislatively mandated by the annual Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Acts so Congress could end these requirements.