source: Austin Kocher
Welcome to the weekly segment called This Week by the {Immigration} Numbers! I’ll highlight some of the main takeaways from the week’s news that you might have missed, but do it in a unique way. Rather than try to summarize everything, I’ll pick a handful of figures each week that best capture where things are moving, explain why they matter, and provide a source where you can learn more. If you have a number to add to the mix or have a question about any of the numbers here, let me know in the comments.
591
The number of people held at Delaney Hall this week, down from 891 in early April, despite federal claims it holds 'the worst of the worst.'
Internal ICE documents obtained by The New York Times show that 591 people were held this week at Delaney Hall, the GEO Group-run center in Newark, down from 891 in early April. Of those 591, only 76, about 13 percent, have criminal convictions, and 123, about 21 percent, have pending charges. That undercuts the claim by federal officials that ICE is pulling ‘the worst of the worst’ off New Jersey’s streets. The April records told the same story, when one of 891 detainees was rated a high security risk and roughly 90 percent carried no ICE threat level at all. My own analysis of earlier detention data found the same pattern. Of the 99 detainees then held with convictions, none had been found guilty of homicide, sexual assault, or drug trafficking, and about 70 percent of those convictions were misdemeanors. ICE stopped publishing its regular detention figures in early April, so the public sees these numbers only because the NYT was able to report on them.
Shanahan, E., & Aleaziz, H. (2026, June 6). ICE Says Detainees Are ‘Worst of the Worst.’ Government Data Disagrees.. The New York Times.
A bit more on this number… The New York Times article above heavily references my recent deep-dive into the Deportation Data Project’s data on Delaney Hall from last week. Huge ‘thank you’ to Ed Shanahan and Hamed Aleaziz for ensuring that these facts get a wider audience. With the right analysis, public data like this can provide important context for contentious battles between civil society and this administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement efforts. The Trump administration misrepresented its enforcement efforts as targeting the worst of the worst and smeared people inside Delaney Hall as “murderers, rapists, and pedophiles.” The data does not back this up. When the New York Times confronted the Trump administration with these facts, they didn’t even try to substantiate their propaganda. The NYT article ends with these two paragraphs:
"Asked this week for current data on the detainees and their criminal records, the Department of Homeland Security responded with a statement that did not include the requested information.
“It is a crime to enter the United States illegally,” the statement said. “Everyone being held inside Delaney Hall broke the law. If you come to our country illegally, we will find you and arrest you.”
Yes, the government has broad legal authority to deport people who violate immigration law, and I have said so repeatedly. That authority is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the decision to cast people with minor offenses, or no convictions at all, as the "murderers, rapists, and pedophiles" officials claimed to be removing, and to keep saying it after the government's own records show otherwise. When the data contradicts the talking points, officials retreat to the bare fact that a law was broken, because it is the only claim they have left. Whether the government should be deporting people for minor civil violations in the first place is a separate question, and one I'll take up next week with Nayna Gupta and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. Register today to join that conversation.
$15,000
The visa bond the Trump administration will require from some World Cup visitors as a condition of entry.
The administration announced a visa bond of up to $15,000 for World Cup visitors from countries outside the Visa Waiver Program and outside the full travel bans, waived only for those who secured tickets or travel plans before April 15, according to Migration Policy Institute analyst Ariel Ruiz Soto. A visa bond is a refundable deposit the government holds to ensure a visitor leaves when their authorized stay ends, so the mechanism itself is not new, but the amount and the World Cup framing are. For a fan from one of the affected countries, a $15,000 deposit works as a wealth test layered on top of the ordinary visa process, and most people who would otherwise travel to a match cannot float that amount of money. Layered on top of the travel bans already in effect for dozens of countries, the bond sorts would-be visitors by passport and by bank balance, which undermines the point of hosting such a global event.
- Ozturk, S. (2026, June 3). ‘Not a World Cup for the World’: Rights Advocates Sound Alarm Ahead of Tournament. American Community Media.
2
The number of times a pregnant Ghanaian woman was hospitalized for pregnancy complications while detained at Dulles Airport, then returned each time to a windowless room.
Annabella Gyasi, who is 38 and pregnant, was held with her four-year-old son for more than a week in a windowless room with a single bed and a toilet at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to her lawyers and reporting on her case. She was hospitalized twice for pregnancy complications, including vaginal bleeding and high blood pressure, and was returned to the detention room after each visit. Gyasi had arrived on a tourist visa for her son’s medical appointment at a children’s hospital, then told officers she feared returning to Ghana, which moved her into expedited removal. The ACLU filed a habeas petition arguing that longstanding policy requires the release of at-risk people such as pregnant women and children, and a federal judge ordered that she be allowed to return home. Federal guidance already directs that pregnant women generally not be detained, so this case turns less on what the rules say than on whether anyone is enforcing them.
- Associated Press. (2026, May). Ghanaian mother and child detained at airport for days after seeking asylum. The Associated Press.
100
The number of deportation cases some immigration courts are now scheduling for a single master calendar hearing, up from the usual 10 to 15.
Immigration attorneys told ABC News that some courts are scheduling 100 or more cases for a single master calendar hearing, the initial appearance where people in deportation proceedings are informed of the charges against them and their rights. Attorneys, who have started calling these sessions “mega masters,” said a typical master calendar hearing involves 10 people, sometimes 15, and that the much larger dockets are appearing with little advance notice. One attorney said a court clerk described a nationwide directive to move up master calendar hearings scheduled for July or later. The master calendar hearing is where people first learn whether they have a viable claim and whether they can find a lawyer, so compressing a hundred of them into one session shortens the window in which due process actually happens. The acceleration is procedural rather than legal, which is part of why it draws less attention than a new rule would, even as it changes how quickly cases move toward removal.
- ABC News. (2026, May 29). Immigration attorneys say some courts are holding over 100 case hearings daily. ABC News.
52-47
The margin by which the Senate passed a roughly $70 billion package to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the end of the Trump administration.
The Senate approved about $70 billion in new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol in a 52-47 vote on Friday, after a roughly 19-hour “vote-a-rama” of unlimited amendments. The package directs $38.6 billion to ICE, $26 billion to CBP, and another $5 billion to DHS for immigration enforcement at its discretion, with the money available to spend immediately on signing through fiscal year 2029. Republicans moved the bill through budget reconciliation, which let them bypass the 60-vote threshold and pass with a simple majority and no Democratic votes. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to vote against it, saying she supports funding the agencies but objects to locking in multiyear mandatory spending that sidesteps the annual appropriations process. The bill now goes to the House.
- Hubbard, K. (2026, June 5). Senate passes bill to fund ICE for 3 years, without ban on DOJ “anti-weaponization” fund. CBS News.
10
The number of people who have died by suicide in ICE detention since January 2025.
At least 10 people have died by suicide in ICE custody since January 2025, against an agency history in which ICE typically recorded one suicide or none in a given year across its 23-year existence. The figure sits inside a larger rise in detention deaths. CNN reported in May that nearly 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office, with 2025 the deadliest year for in-custody deaths in at least two decades and 2026 on pace to be worse. Researchers who study confinement link suicide risk to the length of detention, uncertainty about case outcomes, and access to mental health care, all of which have moved in the wrong direction as the detained population has grown and bond hearings have narrowed. A spike of this size, in a system that for two decades rarely recorded any suicides at all, is the kind of signal that reflects actual conditions rather than mere coincidence.
- Lartey, J. (2026, May 30). Bad Food. Poor Care. No Toilets. ICE Detention Misery Pushes Immigrants to ‘Voluntarily’ Depart. The Marshall Project, citing Associated Press reporting.
33
The number of states where ICE detainees allege in federal court that they were denied adequate medical care.
Detainees in at least 33 states allege in federal suits that immigration detention facilities failed to provide adequate medical care. The reporters, who analyzed roughly 33,000 cases filed by detainees between January 20, 2025 and March 2026, identified about 500 that potentially alleged medical neglect, and found more than 300 containing specific sworn allegations of delayed, denied, or deficient care. Detainees described not receiving medications for conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, and HIV, along with cases of untreated cancer and serious infections. Because these allegations come from court filings rather than from any government tracking system, the count reflects what detainees and their lawyers have been able to document through litigation, which makes it a measure of legal activity as much as of underlying conditions.
- KFF Health News and The Associated Press. (2026, May). Festering Infections to Untreated Cancer: ICE Detainees Describe Medical Neglect Across US. KFF Health News.
1,570
The number of iris scanners ICE purchased in May for $25 million, part of a broader expansion of biometric surveillance.
ICE awarded $25 million to BI2 Technologies for 1,570 iris scanners, adding to the 200 the agency purchased in September 2025, according to Project Salt Box. Iris scanning captures the unique pattern of a person’s eye and stores it as a biometric identifier, which expands the government’s capacity to identify and track people through their bodies rather than through documents they carry. The scanners are one piece of a wider build-out. In the same month, USCIS directed roughly half its spending, about $116 million, to a single contractor to continue collecting applicants’ biometric and biographical data. Surveillance infrastructure tends to outlast the administration that builds it, and identity-capture systems acquired for immigration enforcement rarely stay confined to immigration enforcement.
1st
The first California county to force a private immigrant detention center to open its doors to a local health inspection, after a federal judge ordered access this week.
A federal judge ordered the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a 1,400-bed facility run by CoreCivic near San Diego, to admit San Diego County health inspectors and to complete the inspection no later than June 17. San Diego County sued the Department of Homeland Security in March after two county supervisors and a county health inspector were denied full access to the facility. The county is the first in California to test an inspection authority that a 2024 state law created, which lets local public health officials examine privately run immigrant detention centers. The stakes reach beyond one facility. Otay Mesa is one of eight private detention centers in California now holding around 5,300 people, up from roughly 3,100 when the current crackdown began, and the ruling gives other counties a template for asserting the same oversight. State and local inspection power is one of the few accountability levers that does not depend on the federal government policing itself.
- The San Diego Union-Tribune. (2026, June 3). San Diego judge orders DHS to allow county inspection of Otay Mesa immigrant detention center. The San Diego Union-Tribune.
