ICE goes dark with key immigration data. Here’s how to track it.

All through 2025 and into the first weeks of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that the number of immigrants it detained rose and rose. Then, the lights went out.

ICE has delayed publication of key data that allowed the public to track many aspects of immigration detention since the partial government shutdown started over six weeks ago, defying a congressional mandate to release this data twice a month. 

The last time the agency updated the numbers was Feb. 12, just days before the partial shutdown began over the funding of its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. This puts it among the three longest delays between releases.

After previous negotiations fell through, congressional Republicans on April 1 announced a plan to end the partial shutdown by funding all of DHS, except for ICE and Border Patrol, but the deal had not been finalized as of April 2.

DHS has not updated several dashboards since President Donald Trump took office in 2025. So, this data, ICE’s Detention Statistics, has become an important tool to see how the new immigration-enforcement policies are playing out. It shows how many people are held in detention, the facilities they are held in, and how long they stay in the system. 

“People may underestimate how much usefulness comes from this ICE detention data. It's only a small part of the bigger puzzle about how the DHS conducts its enforcement,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “But it does give us a significant sense into the detainee population.” 

This dataset gives a way to cross-check whether agents are targeting people with no criminal record. It also provides information about detainees that can help immigrant advocates contest detention conditions. 

USA TODAY combined every spreadsheet available on the Wayback Machine going back to 2021 with current data on ICE’s website, along with a few additional datasets, to show how things are changing under the Trump administration and beyond.  

The data reveals that ICE is detaining people at a record level. The detention population reached over 70,000 people in late January, about 80% higher than a year ago.  

But beyond the number of people detained, a significant shift has been in who is targeted. As illegal border crossing attempts on the U.S.-Mexico border plummeted at the tail end of the Biden administration and dropped further under Trump, enforcement efforts have shifted toward the interior of the country.  

That has meant ICE agents cast a wider net with controversial tactics to meet high arrest quotas, like arresting people at immigration hearings, in worksite raids and through racial profiling.  

As a result, the share of detained people with no criminal record has ballooned, accounting for about 42% of the total detained at the end of the first year of the administration. That number was 6% a year ago. These immigrants include those whose only violations are for immigration laws, such as visa overstays and reentry after deportation, some of whom are awaiting their immigration hearings. 

“It had become the most reliable method of transparency of data on ICE detention that we had, and now we are flying in the dark for a month,” Ruiz Soto said.

Historically, it was published roughly every two weeks, with some delays at the end of fiscal years when a final report is made. Ruiz Soto said the current delay is significant. 

A DHS spokesperson blamed the shutdown in an email statement, saying that DHS and ICE “do not have the resources” to publish new detention data. The agency did not respond to questions about when this dataset or other immigration dashboards that stopped updating before the shutdown are expected to be published. It also did not respond to whether it would use funding already approved from Trump's signature bill that gave DHS more than $170 billion.

"When the government shuts down, even a partial shutdown like we’re experiencing now, reporting falls behind. Without a funding agreement, these requirements lapse," said Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the top democrat on a House subcommittee that oversees DHS funding. Cuellar received a pardon from Trump in 2025 in a federal corruption case.

The administration has come under pressure that mounted after the deadly shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota, eventually leading to a shakeup at the agency, including the departure of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for the newly confirmed Markwayne Mullin. 

Before going on spring recess, lawmakers were debating over a plan to end the shutdown that started in mid-February, with Democrats demanding ICE reforms before funding the parent agency’s annual budget – including banning masks and raids without a judicial warrant while expanding the use of body cameras. The negotiations are ongoing in the House and the Senate, but no deal has been reached yet.

In the meantime, immigration enforcement has continued as ICE was given almost $75 billion from Trump’s signature bill in 2025. Much of this money will likely go toward hiring more deportation officers and expanding its network of detention facilities. 

Detaining a record of people requires more facilities to hold them. ICE is setting up new detention centers across the country. All but five states have one. As of Feb. 5, ICE reported holding immigrants in 220 facilities, which is roughly double the number at the start of 2025. That includes local jails, which are sometimes used to hold immigrants, too.  

Recently, ICE has also been buying warehouses across the country to convert them into detention centers, though it hasn’t actually outfitted them or detained anyone in them yet. So far, the agency has spent over $1 billion, USA TODAY previously reported. Many of the site plans face community resistance. In one Georgia town, local officials cut the water and sewage to the warehouse and threw down legal roadblocks. A federal judge ordered a temporary halt to construction for a Maryland site. 

Although detention is meant to be nonpunitive, advocates and lawyers have criticized the conditions at these facilities, such as a lack of health care, exposure to extreme heat, and unsanitary conditions.  

From January 2025 through March 2026, ICE has reported 46 deaths in detention. Of these, 14 came in the first quarter of 2026, on track to surpass last year’s death count. According to an American Civil Liberties Union report that examined deaths in earlier years, the vast majority could have been prevented through proper medical care. 

USA TODAY is tracking all these numbers when they become public while collecting other data, too. For more data, including deaths in detention and deportation numbers, along with notes on how we compile it, visit the new Immigration enforcement tracker here.