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…