Source: American Immigration Council – January 23 2026
When President Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was holding roughly 40,000 people in a national network of detention centers on any given day. In just one year, this number has increased by over 75%, with a record 73,000 people being held in detention as of mid-January.
A new report by the American Immigration Council details the unprecedented growth of ICE detention over President Trump’s first term, which has been fueled by a staggering $45 billion in funding for ICE detention included in the signature “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The report chronicles how the ICE detention system has grown larger, more abusive, and more opaque than ever as the Trump administration rushes to detain ever-greater numbers of immigrants as part of its mass deportation push.
What the report finds:
- The number of people held in ICE detention on any given day increased by over 75% in one year.
- By the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more facilities for immigration detention than at the start of the year, a 91% increase.
- The Trump administration has dramatically changed the profile of who is being arrested by increasing the use of “at-large” arrests in American communities by 600%, leading to an unprecedented deployment of federal law enforcement.
- With the funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE has enough funding to operate upwards of 135,000 detention beds through the end of FY 2029.
- These changes in arrest practices have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day.
- President Trump’s executive order calling for the maximum use of detention has created a “no release” system where increasingly few individuals are able to seek release on bond. By the end of November 2025, discretionary releases from detention fell by 87%.
- With release on bond no longer an option for many people seeking relief, and deleterious conditions inside facilities, immigrants are increasingly giving up. As of November 2025, 14.3 people were deported directly from detention for every one person released from ICE detention pending a hearing.
How the detention and enforcement system has changed under Trump
The changes that have occurred in detention go beyond basic questions of infrastructure and development of the capacity to detain. As immigration enforcement has become the top priority of federal law enforcement, major shifts have occurred in the profile of who is arrested, and therefore who is detained.
These changes have resulted from the expansion of “at-large” arrests in American communities, worksite raids at farms, construction sites, factories, and other businesses, and new “re-arrest” policies at ICE check-ins and immigration courthouses. American communities are now seeing a level of immigration enforcement utterly unprecedented in modern history, leading to a rising backlash and clashes between protestors and DHS officials.
Once people have been arrested, changes in policy have kept them locked up in detention centers for longer or indefinitely, including the establishment of an official no-release policy and the expanded use of “mandatory detention” laws to deny the right to seek bond. People who would have been released by any past administration are now being pressured into giving up their day in court. Immigration judges have been directed to deny bond to thousands of people who were previously eligible, and ICE officers have been told that only high-level officials can approve humanitarian releases.
As more people are detained, those held by ICE are suffering the consequences of the rapid expansion of detention infrastructure. ICE has signed extensive new contracts with private prison companies to reopen shuttered prisons and detention centers or expand existing facilities. At the same time, the agency has begun experimenting with new models for immigration detention of people arrested inside the country, including partnering with Florida on an unprecedented state-based detention center (the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” and the opening of a tent camp on a military base in El Paso).
New plans suggest that the administration may even purchase unused commercial warehouses and convert them into jails to hold thousands of people at a time. This expansion has come alongside the reduction of both internal and external oversight into conditions on the ground, making it harder than ever to track what is going on inside facilities or ensure that contractors are following the law.
Inside ICE detention itself, the conditions that have resulted from this rapid expansion for those caught up in the detention system have increasingly worsened and become more inhumane. With more arrests than detention beds to hold people, ICE facilities saw significant overcrowding in 2025, worsening and substandard medical care, growing complaints of abusive conditions, and documented extensive violations of detention standards. As the system expands before officials ensure there are enough staff or infrastructure in place, people have been “disappearing” for days as ICE’s detainee locator system has become unreliable and access to phones uncertain. Sadly, 2025 was the deadliest year for ICE detention on record, and 2026 is looking to be worse.
A system of detention, which did not fully take off until the mid-1990s, is now on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system by the end of President Trump’s second term in office. With the Trump administration hoping to get over 100,000 detention beds or more online in 2026, ICE detention and the ongoing abuses inside these facilities will only grow more numerous. As the report documents, it will ultimately be on Congress to rein the agency back in. But until that happens, the system is likely to grow even larger for now; and unfortunately the consequences may be deadly.
