ICE Hasn’t Reported Detention or Deportation Data in Months | The Marshall Project
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Filed<br>4:25 p.m. EDT
07.15.2026
News
Amid Increased Scrutiny, ICE Detention and Deportation Data Goes Dark
ICE says ‘millions’ of immigrants have left or been deported in Trump’s crackdown. But where are the receipts?
ICE agents gathered outside Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, during protests against poor conditions in the immigrant detention facility, in May 2026.<br>Neil Constantine/NurPhoto, via Associated Press
By Lauren Villagran
Additional reporting by Raphael Romero Ruiz
Republish
The shooting deaths of two immigrants at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the past week have brought the Trump administration’s violent crackdown into sharp relief once again, triggering protests and calls for accountability. But the government has kept the total number of people caught up in enforcement efforts under wraps since April, angering conservatives and progressives alike.
Dozens of immigrants have died in ICE detention since Trump took office. In recent days, two people, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero, have been fatally shot by ICE agents. In a midterm election year, experts say the need for transparency is urgent. Voices on the political right want proof the president is delivering on his promise to deport millions of people, while others on the left want to know how much damage has been done in immigrant communities.
“Even if there is a good reason for not releasing this information, it still gives the impression they are trying to hide something,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for restrictions on legal immigration. “They should be worried about giving that impression because they are already under so much scrutiny.”
ICE hasn’t released its semimonthly “Detention Management” report on arrests, detentions and deportations since April 9, when the agency reported holding more than 60,000 people in custody.
News media, think tanks and academia have requested the missing data, and ICE has refused to deliver it, sparking at least three separate lawsuits, including one by a far-right group demanding the “true deportation statistics.”
In an email, the Department of Homeland Security told The Marshall Project that, through June 24, the administration had arrested more than 981,000 people and deported 948,000 since Trump took office in January 2025.
An ICE spokesperson blamed a series of government shutdowns for what the agency described as a delay in publishing the data. “ICE is working diligently to the report [sic] and corresponding data out as soon as possible,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
Months-long shutdowns have occasionally slowed the publication of data in the past, but “the government has been open for a while, and these reports should be routine,” Vaughan said.
Homeland Security also said “more than 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. … including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations” in Trump’s first year back in office. The department has not said how it defines or tracks so-called self-deportations, or where the number came from.
“I think everybody’s aware that the numbers being thrown around via press releases and on social media don’t exactly check out,” said Mike Howell, director of the right-wing public policy nonprofit The Oversight Project, on a podcast with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.
The Oversight Project sued the Trump administration for immigration enforcement data earlier this month, seeking records that back up the administration’s claims.
Howell’s start-up, an offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation, joins the list of news and nonprofit organizations seeking records.
The Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA, which publishes immigration data received from ICE, has also sued the administration; The Marshall Project has filed an amicus brief in support of the complaint. The lawsuit seeks records that “provide a quantitative window into how the U.S. government is carrying out immigration enforcement and how it compares to past administrations.”
The Deportation Data Project has become a go-to source for reporters and researchers, building on work compiling...