The Detention State: Inside ICE’s Archive of Fear
From charter flights to detainer requests, new FOIA-obtained data reveals the architecture of a deportation regime remade by Trump’s return—and Stephen Miller’s blueprint.
WASHINGTON — The Deportation Data Project has published its second comprehensive dataset on ICE enforcement activity since the January 2025 inauguration, offering one of the most detailed statistical portraits to date of immigration arrests, detentions, and deportations during the Trump-Vance administration.
The June 2025 data release includes information on more than 1.2 million ICE encounters and over 100,000 removals (deportations) that occurred between September 2023 and early June 2025. The release compiles records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by multiple advocacy and research organizations.
The data spans seven categories: arrests, detainers, detentions, encounters, charter flights, removals, and risk classification assessments. ICE provided anonymized identifiers within each dataset that allow users to track individual cases across related enforcement stages—such as from arrest to deportation—within each release. However, identifiers do not match across different releases, limiting longitudinal tracking across time.
ICE recorded more than 1.17 million detentions and 306,000 detainer requests during the covered period. Detainers are notices sent to local jails asking them to hold individuals for immigration pickup. The project also documented 249,000 arrests and 1.24 million encounters—interactions that may or may not lead to arrest.
The removals data only covers deportations from January 1, 2025, onward. The project’s analysts note that data from earlier in the year appeared to contain significant errors and was excluded. “Although we have not found obvious errors in the later records, the errors in the earlier records lead us to advise caution when using the removals data table,” the group wrote.
This release also includes ICE’s internal “risk classification assessments,” a tool used to determine whether an immigrant is a flight risk or a danger to the community. The most recent RCA data runs through September 2023, prior to the current administration, and includes more than 330,000 records from the prior fiscal year.
The Deportation Data Project, an academic and policy transparency initiative, emphasizes that the datasets reflect official ICE records and are made available for researchers, journalists, and advocates seeking to understand how immigration enforcement is carried out under current policy directives.
This is the latest in a series of data disclosures, with earlier datasets stretching back to 2014 and including additional information from agencies such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA).
The release comes amid growing scrutiny of immigration enforcement practices and policy directives issued under Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. While the dataset does not include internal communications or policy memos, it offers a quantitative foundation for evaluating how the administration’s agenda is being implemented on the ground.