A new report finds the number of people in ICE detention has nearly doubled in Trump’s first year back in office, driven by indiscriminate arrest policies that have locked up more and more people without criminal records, “an unprecedented situation for immigration detention.” We break down the numbers with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, which published the report. Reichlin-Melnick explains that ICE’s annual budget has approximately quintupled, even as 2025 marked the agency’s deadliest year so far. Four more people have already died in detention in just the first two weeks of 2026. “Crucially, all of this has been slower than they wanted,” he adds. “Their hope was to have over 100,000 people in detention by today; they’ve hit 70,000.”
