Donald Trump's second presidency has brought sweeping changes to immigration enforcement. One of the top takeaways: ICE detention has expanded dramatically, both in the number of people being held and the sites holding them.
Here are five key things to know about immigration detention today.
Trump kickstarted his promised "mass deportation" campaign in 2025 with a series of executive orders that paved the way for a stricter application of immigration law and for new policies to expand enforcement.
A year in, immigrant arrests have climbed dramatically. The pace of deportation flights – while rising – hasn't quite kept up. The result is that more people are being held in detention for longer.
There were nearly 69,000 people held in ICE detention on Jan. 7, 2026, according to snapshot data provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That figure eclipses the number of detainees last year, which reached fewer than 38,000 people in early January 2025, before Trump took office.
