The One-Sentence Version
ICE is the federal agency that enforces immigration law inside the United States, and since 2025 its arrests have climbed to record levels while the share of the people it arrests who have no criminal record has risen from roughly one in seven to more than half.
What You Need to Know First
The disagreement is partly about facts, not just values
In a February 2026 Marquette Law School national survey, 56 percent of adults favored deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally.[1] A Reuters/Ipsos poll around the same period put support at 61 percent.[2] Broad support for deportation is not in question.
The same Marquette survey asked something else. Respondents were asked whether the United States is mostly deporting immigrants with criminal records or mostly deporting immigrants without them. Fifty-two percent said mostly without; 47 percent said mostly with.[1] Among Republicans, 83 percent said most deportees have criminal records. Among Democrats, 86 percent said most have none.[1]
That is not a difference of opinion about what the country should do. It is a disagreement about what the country is doing, and it can be checked against federal enforcement data. This article checks it.
What ICE is and what it is not
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal law enforcement agency inside the Department of Homeland Security. Its officers work in the interior of the country, arresting and detaining people the agency believes are removable and holding them until they are deported or released. It is roughly 23 years old.[3]
Customs and Border Protection is a different agency. CBP works at the border and at ports of entry. When you read about crossings being up or down, that is CBP. When you read about arrests at a workplace, a courthouse, or a check-in appointment in Ohio, that is ICE. The two are often blurred together in coverage, and keeping them apart makes the numbers legible.
Civil violations and criminal ones
This distinction does most of the work in the argument, and it is not intuitive.
Being present in the United States without legal authorization is generally a civil violation, not a crime. Crossing the border unlawfully is a crime, but remaining after a visa expires, for instance, is not. Someone can be deportable without ever having committed a criminal offense, and federal enforcement data tracks this: it separates people arrested on civil immigration violations alone from people with criminal charges or convictions.[4][5]
One further wrinkle matters when reading the agency’s own numbers. ICE’s category of people with “criminal histories” is broader than most readers would assume. It includes immigration offenses such as unlawful entry and re-entry, low-level traffic violations, and charges that never produced a conviction.[6] A person counted in the criminal column has not necessarily been convicted of anything a reader would think of as a crime.
What Actually Happened
The stated standard
Administration officials have described the enforcement effort consistently. The target, they have said repeatedly, is the “worst of the worst.”[6][4] That standard is worth taking seriously, because it is the one the administration chose, and because it is measurable.
What the data shows
Todd Lyons, then ICE’s acting director, testified before Congress in April 2026.[7] The agency’s figures, reported alongside that testimony, showed 457,000 total arrests, of which 176,000, about 39 percent, involved people with no criminal record at all.[6] An internal DHS document obtained by CBS News found that fewer than 14 percent of those arrested had violent criminal records.[8] About 1.9 percent involved someone accused of gang membership.[6]
The share has moved steadily in one direction. People with no criminal record were 14.7 percent of arrests in February 2025, 34.6 percent in September 2025, and 42.7 percent in January 2026.[6] FactCheck.org reviewed the same trend and summarized it in its headline: as ICE arrests increased, a higher portion had no U.S. criminal record.[9]
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank generally sympathetic to limited government and skeptical of federal power, ran its own analysis of detainee data and found 73 percent of ICE detainees had no criminal convictions, and 5 percent had violent convictions.[10] That finding matters partly because of who produced it. This is not a reading unique to the administration’s critics on the left.
By July 2026 the trend had crossed a line. Federal data released in late August showed that July was the first month of the term in which people with civil immigration violations alone made up more than half of everyone arrested.[4][5] ICE arrested an average of more than 800 people a day with no criminal record.[4]
So the factual question the Marquette poll asked has an answer, and it is the one 52 percent of respondents gave. Most people ICE arrests do not have criminal records, and the administration’s own reported figures show it.
The volume, and where it comes from
Total arrests averaged more than 1,580 a day in July. June set a record at 42,637 arrests; July broke it at 49,138.[4] The White House has pushed the agency toward a target of 2,000 arrests a day.[4]
A numerical target changes what an agency does, because the fastest way to hit a daily number is not to find the hardest cases. The July surge came without the publicized city operations of earlier months. Agents turned instead to traffic stops, arrests at airports, and arrests at scheduled immigration check-ins, which are appointments people attend voluntarily because the government instructed them to.[4]
People who were here legally
Separately from arrests, the administration has revoked the temporary legal status of a large number of people who entered the country lawfully. Tallies drawn largely from Migration Policy Institute analysis put the figure between roughly 1.5 and 1.8 million since January 2025, combining terminations of Temporary Protected Status with the end of humanitarian parole programs.[11][12] The Associated Press put the 2025 total above 1.5 million.[12]
Migration Policy Institute analyst Julia Gelatt described the scale as without recent precedent: “I don’t think we’ve ever seen such a huge number of people losing their immigration status all at once.”[11]
Many of these people hold work permits and have lived in the country for years. Their status was always temporary and revocable, which is a fair point and a real one. What changed is how many were revoked at once, and the effect is that people who followed the process became deportable without doing anything differently.
The removals that follow are now accelerating. In late August 2026, deportation flights to Haiti increased from monthly to weekly, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. One August flight carried several children born in the United States, including a one-year-old, accompanying their deported parents to a country the State Department warns Americans not to visit and where the FAA has barred commercial airlines from landing at the capital’s airport.[32]
Training, oversight, and what can be seen
Three changes to how the agency operates happened alongside the increase in volume.
Training was shortened. Records obtained by The Washington Post in March 2026 showed ICE cut its basic training program by about 40 percent, from 580 hours to roughly 340. Firearms training was halved, from 56 hours to 28. More than 900 officers completed the shortened program and were deployed. Graduation rates fell from about 80 percent to 60 percent.[13] Sen. Richard Blumenthal released whistleblower documents describing the same reductions.[14]
An oversight office closed. In early May 2026 the Department of Homeland Security closed the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, an office within DHS that Congress set up to be independent of ICE and Customs and Border Protection. It reviews complaints about civil rights abuses, excessive force and other alleged misconduct in detention, and its public complaint website went offline. A DHS spokesperson said, “DHS did not shutdown the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman — Congress did.” An internal email attributed the closure to a lack of funding in the appropriations bill that ended the partial government shutdown, though the text of that bill does not require the office to close, HuffPost reported.[15][52]
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said this account rested on a single outlet’s reporting. HuffPost, NPR and ABC News also reported the closure, which DHS, the department the office sits within, carried out.
Body camera footage became discretionary. ICE is equipping its field officers with body cameras. Under a policy the Associated Press reviewed in August 2026, ICE will promptly release footage of shootings or encounters causing death or serious injury only after determining “it is in the best interests of the agency” to do so. A committee of top ICE officials and lawyers reviews the footage and recommends whether to release it promptly, which could happen within 72 hours, but the ICE director can block or indefinitely delay release when “specific and compelling circumstances” justify it, a term the policy does not define. Released footage must have officers’ faces, names, and badge numbers redacted.[16] Acting ICE Director David Venturella said the AP “mischaracterized” the policy by conflating that expedited-release provision with ICE’s broader authority to release footage, and that the restrictions protect investigations and privacy.[53]
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said all such footage is released only when ICE judges it in the agency’s best interests. That provision governs prompt release; ICE says its broader authority to release footage is separate, and its response is now included.
What It Cost
Deaths in custody
Detention deaths have risen. Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights published a joint 72-page report in June 2026 finding at least 52 deaths in ICE custody in the 500 days after the inauguration, with the mortality rate at its highest in more than a decade.[17] A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that most deaths occurred among people held three months or less, and that most involved existing medical conditions that worsened in custody.[18] The population in detention reached roughly 70,000, a record for the agency.[3] The Project On Government Oversight, analyzing the agency’s own inspections website with American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop, found that ICE published 36.25 percent fewer detention facility inspection reports in 2025 than the year before, while detention numbers climbed.[19]
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an investigation the day after the HRW report was published.[20]
U.S. citizens
Citizens cannot lawfully be deported, but citizens have been caught up in enforcement. Border czar Tom Homan confirmed on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that ICE had made “collateral arrests” of American citizens.[21] In one documented case, three children who are U.S. citizens were deported to Honduras with their mother, one of them a four-year-old with late-stage cancer who left without medication, according to the families’ attorneys.[22]
Who Profits
The detention industry
GEO Group and CoreCivic, both publicly traded, are the country’s two largest private prison companies, and both hold ICE detention contracts. In February 2025, CoreCivic’s CEO told investors he expected the administration’s immigration policies to produce “the most significant growth in our company’s history,” and GEO Group’s executive chairman described “an unprecedented opportunity at this time to play a role in supporting President Trump’s new administration policy.”[27]
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said the two companies operate most of ICE’s detention network. The sources describe them as the country’s two largest private prison companies.
They were right. GEO Group received $2.1 billion in ICE contract obligations in 2025, according to OpenSecrets’ analysis of federal contracting data, and its 2025 profits rose nearly 700 percent, to more than $250 million. CoreCivic’s net income rose nearly 70 percent, to $116.5 million, with more than $650 million in ICE contract obligations. In August 2026 the two companies announced roughly $1.4 billion in combined quarterly revenue as detention climbed.[27][28][54]
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said GEO Group holds more than $2 billion in ICE contracts, roughly half its revenue. The revenue-share figure was not supported and has been removed; OpenSecrets counts $2.1 billion in 2025 ICE contract obligations.
The money also flows toward the administration. GEO Group was the first corporate PAC to max out to the 2024 Trump campaign; GEO-linked giving to the campaign, associated entities, and the inauguration totaled nearly $2 million, and a GEO subsidiary gave $1 million to Trump’s super PAC in 2026. CoreCivic and its CEO donated $816,600 to the campaign and inaugural committee.[27]
The president’s own portfolio
This is the part most coverage of detention never reaches, and it comes from Trump’s own financial disclosures.
An analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog, found that Trump’s brokers have made 29 trades in GEO Group and CoreCivic stock since he returned to office. The first purchases came on the tenth day of his term. The account traded these stocks every month of 2025 except August and December, between $281,029 and $990,000 in total. In February 2025, the same month both companies’ executives predicted historic growth from his policies, his account made seven separate purchases of their stock.[27]
The pattern extends to other ICE contractors. In February 2026, Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million of Axon, the Taser maker; two weeks later, ICE posted a five-year contract solicitation worth about $220 million whose specifications, three procurement experts told CNBC, appeared written so that only Axon could win it. Axon’s stock rose more than 30 percent in the week after the notice.[29] His first-quarter disclosure also showed at least $260,000 in Palantir purchases; in February the administration signed a purchasing agreement worth more than $1 billion giving DHS components, including ICE, access to Palantir’s platforms without competitive bidding.[30]
What the law says, and doesn’t
For almost any other federal official, this would be legally dangerous territory: a criminal statute bars executive-branch employees from participating in matters in which they hold a financial interest. The president is exempt from it.[55] CNBC, reporting the Axon timing, was explicit that no law was broken and that there is no evidence Trump knew of the procurement, that contracting officials knew of his purchase, or that Axon knew he was a shareholder.[29]
The White House says there are no conflicts because the accounts are managed by outside brokers replicating stock indexes, and the Trump Organization says he has no control over the trades. Those defenses deserve to be weighed rather than waved away. What they do not resolve is the structure: unlike most recent past presidents, Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust, so he holds and trades, in his own name, the stock of companies whose revenue his detention policy drives.[27] And because his disclosures report monthly totals in broad ranges, the public cannot match any trade to any decision, in either direction. The system that would prove innocence or guilt does not produce the data.
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said “unlike recent past presidents.” CREW’s wording is “most” recent past presidents.
The revolving door
The personnel connections run the same direction as the money. The acting director of ICE, David Venturella, is a former GEO Group executive who worked as a paid GEO consultant until January 2025. Border czar Tom Homan was also a paid GEO consultant before joining the government, and Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for GEO Group before her appointment.[27]
One decision makes the stakes concrete. In June 2026, Venturella signed the memo ending ICE’s obligation to publicly report the deaths of detainees who die within 30 days of release, a rule created in 2021 to stop the agency from avoiding responsibility for deaths that occur just after custody ends. GEO Group operates about 25,000 of the beds in the system whose death reporting just narrowed, and CREW set the companies’ record 2025 profits beside the current fiscal year, the deadliest ever for people in ICE custody.[27][31]
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said the industry’s most profitable year and the deadliest year in ICE custody were the same fiscal year. CREW’s profit figures are for 2025; the death count is for the current fiscal year.
To be precise about what this section does and does not establish: there is no evidence that detention policy was set in order to benefit anyone’s stockholdings. What the documents establish is narrower, and public: the person who sets detention policy holds and trades the stock of its two largest beneficiaries, lawfully, inside a disclosure system too coarse to audit.
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version said the president’s prison trades are small next to his portfolio. No source supports that comparison, and it has been removed.
Common Claims and What the Evidence Shows
”The border is more secure than it has been in decades, so this is working.”
This is accurate, and it is the strongest argument in the administration’s favor.
Border crossings have fallen sharply. CBP recorded 30,561 total nationwide encounters in October 2025, the lowest start to a fiscal year the agency has recorded, 29 percent below the previous record low set in October 2012.[23] By mid-2026 Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border were running roughly 94 percent below the monthly average under the previous administration, and DHS has reported more than a year of consecutive months with zero releases at the border.[24]
Anyone assessing this record honestly has to hold both findings at once. Border enforcement and interior enforcement are different operations measured by different data. The border numbers are a real achievement by the administration’s own stated goals. They do not tell you who ICE is arresting in Denver or Newark, and they are not evidence about it either way.
”Anyone here illegally broke the law, so criminal record is beside the point.”
This is a coherent position, and it is a legitimate one. If the objection is to unlawful presence itself, then whether a person has a separate criminal record does not matter, and enforcement against people with clean records is enforcement working as intended.
Two things follow from taking it seriously. First, it is a different argument from the one the administration has been making publicly. “Worst of the worst” is a claim about prioritizing dangerous people, and it invites exactly the comparison this article makes. An argument that criminal record is irrelevant abandons that framing rather than defending it.
Second, the public appears to distinguish. In the Marquette survey, support for deporting immigrants in the country illegally stood at 56 percent, but when respondents were asked specifically about people who “have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record,” support fell to 44 percent, with 56 percent opposed.[1] The same poll found that among people who favor deportations generally, 35 percent still disapprove of how ICE is conducting them.[1]
“The criminal-record statistics are misleading because many have prior charges.”
There is something to this, and it cuts in an unexpected direction. ICE’s own “criminal history” classification is broad, sweeping in immigration offenses, minor traffic violations, and arrests that never led to a conviction.[6] A wide definition inflates the criminal column rather than the non-criminal one, which means the no-record figures cited here are, if anything, conservative.
The Cato analysis approached it from the conviction side and found 73 percent of detainees with no criminal convictions and 5 percent with violent convictions.[10]
“ICE officers face real danger and need the tools and discretion to do the job.”
The job carries genuine risk, and that is not in dispute. The question is whether the specific changes made since 2025 improve safety or work against it.
Shorter training is difficult to defend on safety grounds. Cutting firearms instruction from 56 hours to 28 while deploying more than 900 officers who completed the abbreviated program does not obviously protect either officers or the public.[13] Border czar Tom Homan has argued that body cameras “actually exonerate agents more than they … provide evidence of wrongdoing.”[16] If that is right, it is an argument for releasing footage rather than for a policy that releases it promptly only when doing so serves the agency’s interests.
Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version of Homan’s quote left out words without marking the omission. It now matches what he said, with an ellipsis.
”Public opinion supports this.”
Partly. Majorities support deportation as a goal, at 56 percent in the Marquette poll and 61 percent in Reuters/Ipsos.[1][2] Majorities do not support the current execution: 60 percent said they disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, against 40 percent who approve.[1] Both findings are from the same survey and the same respondents.
The partisan split is wide. Eighty percent of Republicans approve of ICE’s work, compared with 23 percent of independents and 5 percent of Democrats.[1]
Where Things Stand Now
Arrests are at record levels for the term, with July at 49,138 and a daily target of 2,000 coming from the White House.[4] The majority of people arrested in July had no criminal record.[4]
Detention is at roughly 70,000 people, the highest in the agency’s history, with deaths in custody at their highest rate in more than a decade and inspections down.[3][17][19] The statutory ombudsman office that reviewed detention complaints is not operating.[15]
In August 2026 ICE awarded a $16.7 million no-bid contract for 6,000 pairs of gloves that deliver electric shocks. The agency’s own procurement notice says the device is for use when a subject is “actively or passively resisting,” and lists civil disturbances outside detention facilities among the scenarios. The manufacturer’s guidance says the gloves should not be used as punishment and warns against use on children, the elderly, pregnant women, or people with disabilities. DHS defended the purchase, saying that “sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from any safety equipment is despicable.”[25][26]
One operation in Frederick, Maryland, in early September shows how these encounters can unfold at street level. Beginning September 3, ICE agents staked out a small neighborhood for about 40 hours; ICE told the Frederick News-Post the operation followed a man who fled a traffic stop. On the night of September 4, according to city officials, agents drove onto a sidewalk where observers were standing and then used batons on people who had linked arms in front of the home the agents appeared to be targeting. Video shows at least one agent striking a person on the ground. Katie Nash, the city council’s vice president, acknowledged the observers were in the way: “I understand they can’t block the house. But they weren’t violent.” No one was arrested. The city said its police were not notified in advance, and a local rapid-response group, citing a radio interview, said the police chief reported that agents would not tell his officers whether they had a warrant. DHS declined to discuss the operation, saying, “if you break the law, you will face the consequences.”[33]
On September 14, the DHS inspector general reported on its unannounced January inspection of the Florida detention site known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Between July 2025 and January 2026, it found, the facility confined 79 ICE detainees in small metal enclosures of about 18 square feet, for periods “ranging from several minutes to nearly 2 hours,” a practice the inspector general called “unprecedented among ICE facilities inspected by OIG.” Florida ran the facility, but the report concluded that because it held ICE detainees, “ICE detention standards would apply.” DHS said the site “was consistent with the same federal detention standards employed by previous administrations, including Biden and Obama.” The facility closed in June 2026.[34]
Records the Guardian obtained through a public-records lawsuit show at least 18 women miscarried in ICE custody from January through September 2025, and that the agency has no miscarriage data after October 3, 2025, when it changed how detainee medical claims are processed. DHS confirmed it “does not have data on miscarriages from October 2025 through June 2026.” The same records show at least 87 pregnant women and adolescents in detention in October 2025 and 101 in November. DHS says a 2021 directive on detaining pregnant women “is still in place.”[35]
On September 15, a federal judge in Washington ruled for David Streever, a Rochester, New York man whom ICE agents tracked down and left a warning notice after he sent a harshly worded email to the agency’s then-acting director. The judge set aside the notice for now and barred DHS from relying on it or the email, writing that “Mr. Streever has a right to express his political views through non-threatening speech, however degrading the speech might be.” The government did not argue the email was a violent threat. The ruling is paused for fourteen days to allow an appeal.[36]
On September 20, an ICE agent shot a man once in the torso in North Austin, Texas. He was hospitalized in serious but stable condition and then taken into federal custody. City officials, Texas state police, the Department of Homeland Security and bystander video all confirm the shooting; DoorDash confirmed he was making a delivery at the time. Much else is unsettled a day later. DHS says he had a final order of removal and entered the country illegally “under the Biden administration.” His lawyer says he “previously held a valid work permit” and entered lawfully. Both can be true, because this administration has reclassified people admitted under earlier parole programs. DHS has not said why the agent fired. Claims that agents rammed or boxed in his car are allegations from his lawyer and a city council member, and Austin’s police chief called her own information “very preliminary.” The part already on the record is who is investigating: Homeland Security Investigations, which is a branch of ICE, with FBI help. CBS News described that as “a notable departure from longstanding federal practice.” Local police, the Texas Rangers and the county district attorney say they will investigate too.[37]
A different part of the system came into view on September 21. The government sends some deportees to countries they are not from, under agreements it negotiates with those countries. The Washington Post, working from internal State Department records, reported that the administration “has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries” as of June. Most of that is promised to international organizations; $81 million is direct payments to 13 governments. The money is pledged, not spent. The deals are handled by a new Office of Remigration inside the State Department bureau that used to resettle refugees. A consortium of news organizations counted at least 25,447 people sent to 28 countries as of August 31, about 20,000 of them to Mexico. The White House says the people sent to third countries are those “whose home countries won’t accept them including dangerous criminals,” or who asked not to be returned home; the Guardian found that most of the countries involved say they will not take people with violent criminal records. The State Department says the Post mischaracterized its officials’ work.[38]
Three days earlier, a federal appeals court ruled that the process used for these removals breaks federal law: people must be told where they are being sent and given a real chance to say they fear harm there. The court sided with the government on one narrower point. DHS says the policy “continues, as the First Circuit’s ruling is not currently in effect.”[39]
A quieter change came to light on September 21. ICE runs a public website, the Online Detainee Locator, that families and lawyers use to find out where someone is being held. The Associated Press reported, citing three current and former ICE officials, that on September 15 ICE stopped listing people who have final orders of removal. The immigration lawyers’ association had warned its members three days earlier that the site “is no longer providing information on individuals with final removal orders.” ICE did not announce the change and, asked about it, would neither confirm nor deny it; it said people with final orders are a priority for deportation. Lawyers say the effect is practical. “If you can’t find your client, don’t know what’s happening to your client, you can’t get that information to the court to stop their removal,” said an ACLU attorney. How many people are affected has not been counted; AP found that nearly 16,000 people booked into detention in July had final orders. No law requires the locator, but the department’s own 2025 privacy review describes it as covering people currently in ICE custody, and in March ICE told a federal judge that families are notified through it within two hours of a transfer.[40]
Three encounters on one Sunday, September 20, ended in an injury, a death and a shooting, and in each case a local agency said afterward that it could not get information out of the federal agents involved.
In Austin, an ICE officer shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan making a delivery. Two DHS officials later told NBC News that the officer had been issued a body camera and was not wearing it; a second officer’s camera caught partial footage that misses the shooting itself. Six weeks earlier ICE had said it was “on track to equip every officer and agent in the field with body-worn cameras by the end of August.” The video that was released came from Austin police, not ICE, and one clip complicates the account his lawyers gave: his car is shown stopped at the roadside with an officer at the window about 14 minutes before the shooting. The police chief also said there was no evidence of the foot pursuit reported on the first day. A federal judge blocked his deportation on September 22 and set a hearing for September 30; the Travis County district attorney has asked federal officials to keep him in the country because he is “a material witness,” and is still waiting to hear whether investigators will hand over evidence. DHS published a long rebuttal that answers a great deal, including that he is receiving pain medication and that his removal order was issued in absentia, and does not say why the officer fired. No investigation has concluded.[42]
In Evanston, Illinois, ICE officers stopped a man who resembled someone they were looking for. He was a U.S. citizen and an Evanston resident. Video obtained by CNN and separate video verified by NBC News show two officers pinning him to the street while he says, “I’m a f---ing US citizen,” and then driving away while he lies face down. He was treated at a hospital for injuries to his head, neck and teeth. The officers’ account, given to an Evanston police officer nearby, is that he refused to identify himself and resisted, and that they left when protesters began gathering. DHS said the operation was “highly targeted” and that “we know who we are targeting ahead of time,” and said nothing about his injuries or why no one rendered aid. The Evanston Police Department, a city agency, is the only body investigating.[43]
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, agents tried to stop a car at about 7 a.m.; the driver drove off and, about a mile later, hit a tree and died in the fire. Nobody has established that agents chased him, and this article does not say they did. What is on the record is that the city police did not disclose the ICE involvement for two days, and then said its investigators “are limited in their ability to gather information from federal agents about events preceding the crash.” The chief asked the state police in; Gov. Gretchen Whitmer then ordered an independent state review. ICE has said nothing publicly about the death.[43]
A fourth story that week was about where people are held rather than how they are stopped. On September 21, House Oversight Democrats released photographs and accounts from ICE whistleblowers describing the agency’s field office in Miramar, Florida, a processing building whose holding rooms are rated for about 50 to 56 people. In August it held 342 at once. The photographs show people sleeping in rows on the floor of the garage entrance, portable toilets overflowing, and detainees asleep in handcuffs and leg irons. These are allegations from anonymous sources and no inspector general has examined Miramar, but a member of Congress who inspected the building in July described the same thing, a named former detainee confirmed the overcrowding, and the inspector general has already substantiated similar findings at two other Florida facilities. ICE’s own standards cap holding-room confinement at 12 hours. The department’s response addressed none of the specifics: “Miramar is a processing facility not a detention facility… Being in detention is a choice.”[44]
A separate document, this one written by ICE itself, shows where the system is headed. Solicitation 70CDCR26R00000026, “Turn-key Detention Facilities,” was posted to the federal contracting site SAM.gov, and an attachment on transport for the Philadelphia field office describes vans assigned to arrest teams and kept in a staging location nearby: “These teams would act as ‘mobile detention facility’ until the vans are full and/or all operations in the area are completed.” The same sentence repeats for six ICE offices, with at least twelve transport teams requested a day, seven days a week. The stated reason is efficiency, so that officers are not pulled away from arrests to drive people back to the field office.
What the document does not say is the part worth noticing. It sets one time limit: “Except in emergency situations females may not be transported by bus for more than ten hours.” That covers buses rather than vans, and transport rather than detention. There is no equivalent limit for men, none for vans, and nothing in the attachments about food, water, restrooms or medical care for someone held in one. A clause in the same document tells the contractor that stricter state or local rules “shall not apply to the performance under this contract.” Nothing has been awarded yet; this is a solicitation, and proposals were due September 11. ICE did not answer questions from NPR or from the watchdog that first reported it.[45]
A court drew a line on September 21 in southern Alabama. Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock, whom Trump appointed, temporarily paused three practices at construction sites while a lawsuit proceeds: entering private sites without a warrant or consent, detaining workers without specific suspicion that they are in the country illegally, and continuing to hold them after they show proof of citizenship or legal status. The case was brought by Leo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. citizen born in Florida who builds houses in Baldwin County. According to the court, in May 2025 officers came over the fence at his job site, tackled him while he filmed his brother’s arrest, “told him his REAL ID was fake,” and held him for over an hour. In June 2025 an officer ordered him out of a house he was building and held him again. The government argued that it never needs a warrant to enter a construction site, and a DHS official declared, “I am not aware of any Warrantless Entry Policy, Preemptive Detention Policy, or Continued Detention Policy.” The judge was not persuaded: “The Court is simply not inclined to take the Government’s word for it.” Two limits matter. This is a temporary pause in a case covering southern Alabama, not a nationwide ruling or a final judgment. And a third stop, in May 2026 after he sued, is disputed: he says officers tackled and shackled him, and DHS says he “was NOT detained.”[41]
The third-country ruling took effect late on September 23, when the appeals court lifted the pause it had placed on it. The government said it had to cancel a flight carrying 70 people to three countries it did not name, and on September 24 it asked the Supreme Court to let the removals resume while it appeals. The Solicitor General argued that the order delays removal “for any alien who voices a fear of persecution or torture in that country, no matter how frivolous or belated the claim.” The ruling does not ban sending people to third countries; it requires notice and a real chance to object. The plaintiffs have until September 28 to respond.[46]
On September 29 the Supreme Court let the removals resume. It paused the ruling and agreed to hear the case itself in December, with the pause lasting until it decides. Three justices, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, would have denied the request; there was no written explanation either way. It is the third time the Court has let the policy continue while the litigation runs.[49]
On September 24 a federal judge in Manhattan ruled, after a trial, that conditions in ICE’s short-term holding rooms at 26 Federal Plaza during the summer of 2025 were “inhumane and unconstitutional.” Rooms meant to hold people for hours held dozens for days; the court heard of a man kept nearly three weeks in a room with up to 90 people. Judge Lewis Kaplan found that ICE “did so to inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport,” and made his limits on crowding, and his requirements for sleep, hygiene, medical care and calls with lawyers, permanent. The Department of Homeland Security said detainees are held there only for a short period while being processed.[47]
The same week, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that reviewed the program at the request of congressional Democrats, reported that ICE expanded detention without a plan and wasted money doing it: more than $20 million it cannot recover on warehouses bought for about $1.07 billion that it now plans to sell, and $2.85 million spent on tents at Guantánamo Bay that were taken down before anyone was held in them. DHS agreed to write a strategic plan by August 31, 2027. A DHS spokesperson said ICE is working on “cost-effective and innovative ways” to carry out mass deportations.[48]
A set of ICE’s own records was briefly public in late September. On Friday, September 25, the agency posted 33 internal mortality reviews, the medical assessments it commissions after a detainee dies, to its online records library. By September 30 the pages read “not found,” The American Prospect reported, and ICE did not answer questions about why they came down. Outlets that had saved the files described what was in them. The reviews cover deaths from September 2019 to January 2026, so they span three administrations. In 27 of the 33, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, independent reviewers concluded the care the detainee received fell outside “safe practice limits.” Of the 11 reviews of deaths since January 2025, eight reached that finding. In one case, staff “failed to initiate” CPR on a woman who had no pulse, according to her review, while ICE’s public report on her death had said staff “immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.” ICE’s response to the Chronicle: “At no time during detention is a detained illegal alien denied emergent care.” A former senior ICE official who served under Obama, Trump and Biden told the paper, “I see why they pulled (the reports) down, it’s pretty damning.” No one has explained the removal, so the reason is not known.[50]
On October 1, the family of Renee Good filed two federal lawsuits in Minnesota. Good was shot and killed on January 7 by an ICE officer who fired into her SUV in Minneapolis, during the enforcement operation known as Operation Metro Surge; bystanders filmed it. One suit, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the law that lets people sue the federal government for harm caused by its employees, names only the United States. The other names the officer, Jonathan Ross, along with Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other current and former officials, and alleges that the shooting was “the predictable and intended product” of the operation. A White House spokeswoman said, “We intend to vigorously defend these baseless civil lawsuits.” A law professor at the University of St. Thomas told the Associated Press the family is “going to face significant uphill battles,” adding that “[t]hese are both complicated types of lawsuits.”[51]
The border numbers remain at multi-decade lows.[23][24]
Whether that trade is worth making is a judgment, and it is yours to make. What the record will not support is the belief that the people being arrested are mostly people with criminal records. On that narrower question, the government’s own data is clear.
Sources
2. The Hill: Majorities back Trump on deportations, but oppose methods (Reuters/Ipsos survey)
3. NPR: Deaths in ICE custody already surpass last year’s total (March 10, 2026)
6. The Daily Beast: ICE’s Own Numbers on the “Worst of the Worst” Claim (April 2026)
7. Todd Lyons, Acting ICE Director: Written Congressional Testimony (PDF, April 16, 2026)
9. FactCheck.org: As ICE Arrests Increased, a Higher Portion Had No U.S. Criminal Record
10. Cato Institute: 5% of ICE Detainees Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions
11. MS NOW: They immigrated legally. Under Trump, 1.8 million have been “de-legalized.” (July 30, 2026)
13. The Washington Post: Records show ICE training was slashed to speed deportations (March 3, 2026)
17. Human Rights Watch / Physicians for Human Rights: Deaths in ICE Custody Surge (June 25, 2026)
18. KFF: Deaths and Health Care Issues in ICE Detention Centers Under the Second Trump Administration
19. Project On Government Oversight: ICE Inspections Plummeted as Detentions Soared in 2025
21. CBS News: Transcript, Border czar Tom Homan on “Face the Nation”
22. CNN: 3 children who are US citizens, including one with cancer, deported
23. U.S. Customs and Border Protection: DHS delivers historic start to border crossings for FY 2026
25. The Epoch Times: ICE Awards $16.7 Million No-Bid Contract for 6,000 Pairs of Electric Shock Gloves
27. CREW: Trump has made 29 private prison stock trades since taking office (July 21, 2026)
29. CNBC: Trump bought Axon stock weeks before ICE sought a $220 million Taser contract (June 29, 2026)
30. NOTUS: Trump Bought Corporations’ Stock as His Administration Boosted Their Business (May 2026)
31. CNN: ICE to stop reporting deaths of recently released detainees amid scrutiny (June 5, 2026)
32. The New York Times (via Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette): US plans to expand Haitian removals (August 28, 2026) and UPI: U.S. deports 57 more people to Haiti during gang violence surge (August 28, 2026)
33. The Baltimore Banner: ICE agents violently clash with Frederick protesters after 2-day stakeout in neighborhood (September 5, 2026) and Maryland Matters: Officials demand answers after violent ICE confrontation with Frederick protesters (September 8, 2026) and Daily Voice: ICE refused to tell Maryland cops if agents had warrant before clash, chief says
34. DHS Office of Inspector General: Report OIG-26-22 on the Florida Soft-Sided Facility (September 11, 2026) and CNN: ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ put detainees in metal cages labeled ‘calming areas,’ watchdog finds (September 14, 2026) and CBS News: Alligator Alcatraz held detainees in “cramped conditions,” DHS watchdog finds and Reason: ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ held detainees in small metal cages, inspector general report finds (September 14, 2026)
35. The Guardian: Revealed: ICE lost count of miscarriages, while detaining a record number of pregnant women (September 15, 2026) and Human Rights Watch: US Ramps Up Deportation of Pregnant People (March 20, 2026)
36. U.S. District Court for D.C.: Streever v. Mullin, Memorandum Opinion (September 15, 2026) and NPR: Judge blocks DHS from acting against a man over a harsh email to an ICE official (September 15, 2026)
37. The Texas Tribune: ICE officer shoots, injures man in Austin, officials say (September 20, 2026), CBS News: ICE agent shoots and wounds man in Austin, Texas, sparking demands for full investigation (September 20, 2026), CNN: Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot and wounded by ICE agent in Austin, Texas, officials say (September 21, 2026) and Fox News: ICE shooting rocks Austin as Democrat demands bodycam video, independent probe (September 20, 2026)
38. The Washington Post: How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation (September 21, 2026), The Guardian: Banished to alien lands: Trump’s secret deportation deals (September 21, 2026) and Forbidden Stories: The office of Remigration (September 2026)
39. Reuters via U.S. News: US Appeals Court Rejects Trump Policy Allowing Swift Deportations to Third Countries (September 18, 2026) and CBS News: Appeals court rejects Trump’s third-country deportation policy (September 18, 2026)
40. Associated Press: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders (September 21, 2026), American Immigration Lawyers Association: Featured Issue: Immigration Detention and Alternatives to Detention (September 18, 2026 alert) and DHS: Privacy Impact Assessment for the Online Detainee Locator System (July 16, 2025)
41. U.S. District Court, S.D. Alabama: Order, Venegas v. Homan, Doc. 106 (September 21, 2026), Reason: Judge blocks warrantless ICE construction site raids after agents in Alabama arrested a U.S. citizen 3 times (September 21, 2026), Courthouse News: Alabama judge freezes ICE construction site tactics after US citizen targeted (September 21, 2026) and ProPublica: Why Have Immigration Agents Detained This American Citizen Three Times? (May 15, 2026)
42. NBC News: ICE officer who shot man in Austin was issued a body camera but wasn’t wearing it (September 2026), CNN: A Venezuelan man was shot by ICE in Austin while doing deliveries. Here’s what we know (September 22, 2026), KUT 90.5: Austin Police, Travis County DA launch independent investigation into ICE shooting (September 22, 2026) and CNSNews: DHS Debunks 7 ‘Lies Spread by Mainstream Media’ About Austin Shooting (September 22, 2026)
43. CNN: ‘I’m a f**king US citizen’: Man left injured after ICE mistakenly detained him, officials say (September 22, 2026), NBC News: Video shows injured man on the ground after ICE mistakenly targets him (September 2026), Evanston RoundTable: Evanston resident mistakenly detained by ICE Sunday morning, EPD says (September 20, 2026), Michigan Public: Driver was fleeing ICE before fatal crash, GRPD says (September 22, 2026) and The Detroit News: ICE agents tried to stop driver before fatal Grand Rapids crash (September 22, 2026)
44. House Oversight Democrats: Ranking Members Garcia, Thompson and Frost Demand Answers From ICE on Dangerous Conditions in Florida Immigration Facilities (September 21, 2026), Miami Herald via Yahoo News: Extreme overcrowding and abuse plague Florida ICE facilities, whistleblowers say (September 21, 2026), Reason: Whistleblower Photos Show ICE Detainees in Miramar, Florida, Amid Extreme Overcrowding, Overflowing Toilets (September 22, 2026) and NBC 6 South Florida: New images raise questions about conditions at ICE facility in Miramar (September 22, 2026)
45. SAM.gov, Department of Homeland Security, ICE: Turn-key Detention Facilities, RFP 70CDCR26R00000026, Amendment A0001 (posted September 3, 2026), SAM.gov: Attachment 10c1, Enhanced Transport Requirements, Requirement C (Philadelphia), NPR: ICE is looking into ‘mobile detention facilities’ (September 23, 2026) and Project Salt Box: Mobile detention sites, courtrooms inside the jails, and a clause saying state law does not apply (August 29, 2026)
46. Associated Press: Trump administration turns to Supreme Court as third-country deportations are thrown into question (September 24, 2026) and CNN: Trump urges Supreme Court to restart deportations to countries with poor human rights records (September 24, 2026) and Breitbart: Trump Asks Supreme Court to Restart Deportations to ‘Safe Third Countries’ (September 24, 2026)
47. Gothamist: Judge rules ICE sought to ‘inflict punishment’ on immigrants held in NY (September 25, 2026) and Courthouse News Service: In final ruling against ICE, judge blasts ‘dreadful’ and ‘squalid’ conditions at 26 Federal Plaza (September 24, 2026) and Axios: ICE ordered to fix “squalid” conditions at NYC detention facility (September 24, 2026)
48. U.S. Government Accountability Office: Immigration Detention: Urgent Planning Needed to Avoid Further Waste of Taxpayer Dollars, GAO-26-108663 (September 24, 2026) and CBS News: ICE wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in rapid push to expand detention capacity, government watchdog finds (September 2026) and Politico: GAO finds ICE ‘wasted’ millions of dollars in deportation push (September 24, 2026)
49. Supreme Court of the United States: Docket No. 26A406, Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. (September 29, 2026) and AP: Supreme Court lets quick deportations to third countries resume for now while it weighs Trump policy (September 29, 2026) and CNN: Supreme Court allows Trump to restart controversial deportations to countries they have no connection to (September 29, 2026)
50. San Francisco Chronicle: ICE published, then removed, internal reports detailing medical failures in detainee deaths across U.S. (September 2026), The Intercept: ICE Deleted Reviews for Deaths in Custody That Cited Shoddy Medical Care (September 30, 2026), The American Prospect: Disturbing Pictures of Neglect in ICE Mortality Reviews (September 30, 2026) and Reason: ICE Deletes Reports Flagging Medical Neglect in Detention Center Deaths (October 1, 2026)
51. AP: Renee Good’s family sues US government and immigration officials over her killing in Minneapolis (October 1, 2026), CNN: Family of Renee Good sues US government and Trump officials over her death (October 1, 2026), Axios: Renee Good’s family sues Trump administration, ICE agent (October 1, 2026) and U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota: Ganger v. Ross, No. 0:26-cv-04231
52. HuffPost: Trump Admin Closes Watchdog Office For Immigration Detention Abuses (May 4, 2026), NPR: DHS blames funding lapse for shutdown of internal detention oversight (May 7, 2026) and ABC News: Independent agency overseeing misconduct in immigration detention facilities shut down (May 6, 2026)
54. OpenSecrets: Some major Trump donors are now reaping billions in ICE contracts (2026)
55. Time: Trump Reports Over $1 Billion in Income From Crypto Ventures (July 1, 2026)