News from TRAC

CECOT Raises Questions of Enforcement Recordkeeping Transparency

(16 Apr 2025) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased the number of people held in custody in every statistical release since mid-December 2024. Most recently, ICE reported 47,928 detainees as of April 6, 2025. Note that this reported figure does not include individuals apprehended and forcibly sent without due process to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison complex in El Salvador. Beyond due process concerns, sending people in ICE custody to prison complexes in other countries paid for by taxpayer dollars and then not including them in this official accounting also would appear to violate Congressionally mandated detention disclosure requirements.

Separately, new numbers show that the ICE Areas of Responsibility (AORs) near the U.S.-Mexico border—San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, and Harlingen—reduced the number of “active participants” under ICE’s monitoring program, Alternatives to Detention (ATD). Altogether, ATD enrollment among those five offices has dropped by nearly 6,500 enrollees over the past three months. This likely reflects the sharp drop in the reported number of people arriving at the US-Mexico border.

Highlights from data updated in TRAC's Detention Quick Facts tool show that:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement held 47,928 in ICE detention according to data current as of April 6, 2025.
22,249 out of 47,928—or 46.4%—held in ICE detention have no criminal record, according to data current as of April 6, 2025. Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations.
ICE relied on detention facilities in Texas to house the most people during FY 2025, according to data current as of March 31, 2025.
ICE arrested 19,122 and CBP arrested 3,805 of the 22,927 people booked into detention by ICE during March 2025.
Adams County Det Center in Natchez, Mississippi held the largest number of ICE detainees so far in FY 2025, averaging 2,161 per day (as of March 2025).
ICE Alternatives to Detention (ATD) programs are currently monitoring 183,635 families and single individuals, according to data current as of April 5, 2025.
San Francisco's area office has highest number in ICE's Alternatives to Detention (ATD) monitoring programs, according to data current as of April 5, 2025.

TRAC’s Immigration Quick Facts provides the latest data on immigrant detention, immigration court cases, and immigration prosecutions in federal court. Each page includes several key data points alongside a graphic or table, a short description for context, and a link to more data. Click here to see more about TRAC's entire suite of immigration tools.

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TRAC is a self-supporting, nonpartisan, and independent research organization specializing in data collection and analysis on federal enforcement, staffing, and spending. We produce multiple reports every month on critical issues, and we also provide comprehensive data analysis tools.

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