ICE Contractual Capacity and Number Detained: Overcapacity vs. Overcrowding

According to the agency’s own report, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is detaining more and more individuals[1]. Numerous reports show that ICE, after arresting individuals and booking them into one facility, quickly move them to a different detention facility usually far from their home. Was there not capacity at a detention facility closer to where they lived? Or might ICE be moving detainees to locations where judges impose fewer procedural requirements so the agency can deport individuals more quickly?

Answering these questions isn’t always straightforward. Facilities book in and book out individuals on a daily basis and contractual arrangements can change. For this reason, the public needs to know the contractual capacity – the number of beds each facility has contracted with ICE to provide – along with the actual number of individuals ICE has detained at that facility on the same day.

Unfortunately, ICE has been withholding vital information needed to answer these questions. After a concerted FOIA campaign, TRAC has pried loose the contractual capacity of each facility along with the exact number of individuals detained on April 13, 2025. ICE has also released the maximum number of individuals it had held on a single day at each facility during FY 2025.

TRAC is currently seeking to obtain a regularly updated series. However, this one release allows TRAC to do an exact facility-by-facility comparison at a time when well-documented reports had already emerged on serious overcrowding[2].

As of April 14, 2025, detention data reveal that ICE’s contractual capacity nationally was 62,913[3] while ICE held 48,056 the previous night. This means that nationally its utilization of beds was just 3 out of 4 (76%) of available beds it held contracts for across these 181 authorized detention facilities.

Of course, depending on where ICE detainees are held, some facilities can be under- utilized while others are over their contractual capacity. On the previous night of April 13, 2025, 45 out of 181 facilities exceeded their contractual capacity: 8 of these facilities exceeded their contractual capacity by at least 100 detainees, another 24 exceeded the contract by between 10 and 100 detainees, and the remaining 13 facilities exceeded the contractual capacity by less than 10 people.

Out of the 45 facilities with population counts exceeding capacity on April 13, a total of 30 (or 66.7%) were county jails. These facilities have many beds but only contracted a few they guaranteed ICE could use. ICE was authorized to pay for additional beds if needed when the county agreed to provide them[4]. Among the 8 facilities that exceeded contractual capacity by at least 100 on April 13, only 1 was a county facility (Clay County, Indiana).

A total of 13 (28.9%) of facilities that exceeded their contract on April 13 were operated by private contractors. These detention centers—managed by CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections, and Geo Group, among others—accounted for 7 out of 8 facilities where usage on the evening of April 13 exceeded contractual capacity by at least 100 beds.

The remaining two facilities (4.4%) with populations exceeding capacity on April 13 were operated by Federal agencies.

The map below in Figure 1 shows the contractual capacity and the number detained at each detention facility on April 14, 2025 (as of midnight April 13). The facilities labeled in the map were selected based on the facilities mentioned and discussed in this report.

Comparing ICE Detention Facilities That Were Over Contractual Capacity.

According to ICE documentation, contractual capacity is: “The number of beds at a facility allocated for ICE to use as stipulated in the contract or agreement.” The data obtained by TRAC allow additional ways to compare facility populations against contractual capacity beyond the specific single day of April 13, 2025. These give a more comprehensive picture of the extent which facilities exceeded their contractual capacity during FY 2025.

Maximum One-Day Population Count

A total of 84 out of the 181 detention facilities exceeded their contractual capacity on at least one day during October 2024 through mid-April 2025. Table 1 shows the twenty facilities that had the largest differences. For at least one night, Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida, held nearly 1,200 more people than its contractual capacity. Pine Prairie, Texas, held more than 400 people above its contracted specification. Many of the facilities that have exceeded their contractual capacity are operated by county jails. These include Clay County, which detained 248 more people than the contractual max, and Tulsa County, Oklahoma, which held 164 more people than the ceiling.

The entire list of facilities exceeding their contractual capacity for at least one night during FY 2025 up until mid-April can be found in Table 3 which appears in the Appendix at the conclusion of this report.

Average Daily Population—Consistently Above Contractual Capacity

Comparing the contractual capacity to the average daily population during FY 2025 provides another way to see which facilities consistently surpass the contractual ceiling of their contract with ICE in a given year as the average daily population is the average number of people detained at a facility over every day in the fiscal year. A total of 25 out of the 181 authorized ICE facilities met this criterion[5].

It is conceivable, if unlikely, that the facilities listed in Table 1 experienced just one night exceeding the maximum contractual limit. Some facilities often exceed their contractual capacity. Table 2 shows twenty facilities that have held on average more people than their contracted capacity. (Table 3 includes the full list and is found in the Appendix at the end of this report.) These include privately operated centers like Pine Prairie and Krome North, county facilities like Clay County, and federal facilities that have no set contractual capacity but are authorized to house ICE detainees, including Honolulu Federal, Hawaii and Guaynabo MDC in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Many facilities can be found in both tables, meaning that the maximum count was not a one-day spike in population, but was part of a longer tendency to hold more people than the set contracted number of beds.

Contractual Capacity vs. Physical Capacity.

Depending on the detention center, exceeding “contractual capacity” can mean overcrowded facility conditions. For example, Krome had triple its capacity limit for at least one night in fiscal year 2025: a total of 1,806 detainees at a facility designated for a maximum of 611 people. Reporting corroborates the overcrowded conditions that existed at Krome[6]. ICE has recently erected a soft-sided structure and stated it will begin moving 400 detainees into this facility on June 24[7]. This will immediately increase its contractual capacity by 400. Krome claims it no longer exceeds its contractual capacity.

Thus, Krome illustrates that contractual capacity can change and population held vs. existing capacity on the same day are needed to determine if overcrowding at this facility continues to exist.

Other facilities are not overcrowded but simply over their set contractual ceiling. County officials can choose to house more detainees when the facility has more beds available than the number listed in its contract with ICE. Thus, assessing whether ICE has overcrowding depends on the detention facility’s physical capacity to house detainees, not its contractual capacity. These two figures can be quite different. Many county jails set up to hold large numbers of their own detainees also contract to provide a small number of beds for immigration enforcement detainees. Of the 45 facilities exceeding their contractual capacity on April 14, 2025, many had plenty of beds so there was no overcrowding. As noted earlier, two-thirds of these were county facilities.

For example, Grayson County Jail in Leitchfield, Kentucky listed in Appendix Table 3 provided beds for 92 individuals on April 14, but had a contractual ceiling of just 5 detainees. However, the jail’s website shows a substantial jail building and indicates its physical capacity is much larger than 5. Another facility, Tulsa County Jail in Oklahoma, held 174 people in a space with a contractual capacity of only 19. However, its website reports: “The Tulsa County Jail has a capacity of over 2,000 beds.”

Even when a county or private facility has physical capacity to hold more detainees than its contractual capacity, public scrutiny is still needed. Paying county facilities above the contractual ceiling can impact federal appropriations.

The House Appropriations Committee report[8] released on June 24 noted that ICE had made it an annual habit to underestimate its appropriation needs, forcing the agency to go back to Congress for additional supplemental appropriations as well as transfer funds from other components within DHS to cover its actual detention costs. It cited the GAO which had found that: “ICE consistently underestimated the cost to house detained noncitizens due to inaccuracies in the [cost-per-bed] model it used to project these costs.”[9]

The Congressional Committee report found: “Actions already taken in fiscal year 2025 are especially egregious” and “presuppose that other missions within DHS are less important, …[and it] also sets the precedent that the Department can shift funding away from congressional priorities within other components to compensate for ICE’s budgetary mismanagement.”

The bill finally signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025 after passage by both the House and Senate funds a huge expansion in dollars funding detention and removal[10]. It remains to be seen whether ICE projections on the money it needs will continue to underestimate actual costs as the agency accelerates administration efforts to achieve mass deportation.

Conclusion

ICE’s national contractual detention capacity does not tell the whole story. How it is managed in deciding which facility to book in a new person ICE has arrested, and whether to then transfer the individual to another facility are critical to understand. The agency needs to regularly release updated figures on the actual number of individuals held at each facility on a given day along with the matching current contractual capacity at that facility to understand whether overcrowding occurs as the agency rapidly increases the number of individuals it is detaining.

Finally, now that ICE has decided that the federal Freedom of Information Act requires the release of these basic facts, it has no legal justification to hide the existence of these numbers and not make this updated information promptly publicly available on an ongoing basis. ICE certainly has the funding for it now.