Unfortunately, ICE has been withholding vital information needed to determine whether this is really necessary. Were there detention facilities with available beds closer to home? TRAC has now pried loose the contractual capacity of each facility along with the exact number of individuals detained on the same day (April 14, 2025) and is seeking to obtain a regularly updated series.

ICE has also released to TRAC the maximum number of individuals it held on any single day at each facility during FY 2025. This allows a wider examination of overcrowding back in April when there were already widespread documented reports of overcrowding.

These data reveal that ICE often had available beds much closer to the person’s home. Indeed, ICE’s contractual capacity nationally was 62,913 detention beds so its utilization of beds even back in April left about a quarter of them unoccupied. Even with the recent rise in reported detention levels and before passage of new appropriations for ICE on July 4, ICE records indicate it still had available detention capacity it wasn’t using.

However, even with this unused detention capacity, ICE data showed 45 out of 181 facilities exceeded their contractual capacity in mid-April and a total of 84 out of ICE’s 181 authorized detention facilities exceeded their contractual capacity on at least one day during FY 2025.

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.

Other facilities, while over their set contractual ceilings, are not actually overcrowded. Many of these were county facilities where there were plenty of available beds. So not just contractual capacity is important but also physical capacity in determining whether there is actual overcrowding.

The House Appropriations Committee report released on June 24, 2025, noted that ICE had made it an annual habit to underestimate its appropriation needs, forcing Congress to pass additional supplemental appropriations as well as allow transfer of 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.”

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.” This includes taking appropriated money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

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 for ICE detention and removal. It remains to be seen whether ICE’s projections on the money it needs will continue to underestimate actual costs as the agency accelerates administration efforts to achieve mass deportation.

The agency needs to regularly release updated figures on the actual number of individuals held at each detention facility along with the matching current contractual capacity at that facility on the same day to understand whether overcrowding occurs as the agency rapidly increases the number of individuals it is detaining.

ICE has no legal justification to hide the existence of these numbers and not make them promptly publicly available on an ongoing basis. Clearly the release of this data is needed to prevent Congress and the public from continually being left in the dark and misled.