Vera’s tool allows the public to see the kinds of information that ICE should share. Without data transparency, ICE’s operations—and their harms—will continue behind closed doors.
Learn more about how you can use this dashboard to reveal similar kinds of insights as the ones Vera presents here. Scroll to continue or click “X” to return to the tool.
ICE’s network of facilities is vast and ever-changing.
ICE detained people in 1,397 facilities between October 1, 2008, and June 10, 2025 (fiscal year 2009 to mid-fiscal year 2025).
Press “Play” or drag the date slider under the map to view the changing landscape of ICE’s detention facility network.
Fewer than one-third of the 1,397 facilities remained active by June 2025, and only 60 of them (4 percent) were active for the entirety of the 16-year period.
Browse the map to identify facilities in your region that ICE has used for civil immigration detention—including inactive ones that could be reactivated through new contracts or agreements.
ICE obscures the breadth of its detention network by reporting limited, incomplete statistics, and for only a fraction of facilities.
In the first 10 days of June 2025, ICE detained people in 436 facilities but acknowledged using just 163 of them on its website. Vera’s tool features facilities ICE excludes in its public reporting, such as hold rooms, hotels, hospitals, and sections of airports.
Filter by facility type or population size to uncover additional trends. Press 'Clear Filters' to reset and display all facilities.
When ICE shares its limited statistics, the agency presents one moment in time or averages across a single year, which makes it impossible to see longitudinal trends. Vera’s dashboard allows you to see detention numbers for each day of the year over a 16-year period.
Use the slider bar to set the graph’s date range—allowing you to view values for specific dates or longer-term trends.
The number of people in ICE detention has fluctuated between historic highs and lows in recent years.
August 2019 saw then-historic numbers of people being held in ICE detention—with midnight populations reaching more than 55,000 people. ICE detention populations immediately began decreasing and ultimately reached a historic low during the COVID-19 pandemic, with daily midnight populations of under 14,000 people in February and March 2021. Yet rather than seizing this opportunity to permanently scale back ICE’s detention footprint, the U.S. government has allowed detention populations to steadily climb since 2021, with a substantial increase in 2025 as the Trump administration embarked on its mass detention and deportation agenda. As of June 2025, detention populations again reached historically high levels, surpassing the previous August 2019 peak.
When ICE reports on detention populations, it typically provides averaged counts of people detained at midnight (“midnight population”). In contrast, 24-hour populations reflect people detained at any point on a given day, including those booked out or transferred before midnight. As a result, 24-hour and midnight populations can differ drastically. Vera’s tool provides both.
For example, during early 2012, Florence Staging Facility in Arizona detained more than twice the number of people when measured by the 24-hour population rather than the midnight population.
Select the box next to each metric in the legend (e.g. “midnight population”) to toggle graph features on and off. Lines reflect a 30-day rolling average, while the bars and tooltip reflect values for a single date.
Comparing facility populations over time reveals trends in ICE operations.
In 2021, several ICE facilities in New Jersey closed following state legislation that prohibited new, expanded, or renewed detention contracts. Shortly thereafter, ICE began detaining people at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. The former Bureau of Prisons facility had closed as a result of a federal policy to end the Department of Justice’s use of private prisons, yet it quickly reopened its doors under a new federal contract with ICE. Moshannon rapidly became the largest detention center in the Northeast.
Compare populations for up to five facilities at a time through the search box or by selecting points on the map.
Illuminating trends in ICE detention is crucial to understanding broader incarceration trends.
In addition to using private and federal detention facilities, ICE pays local governments to hold people facing civil immigration charges in jails. This practice is so widespread that local jails comprise the most common type of detention facility used by ICE over the 16-year period covered in this data. In this way, ICE provides a perverse incentive for jurisdictions to maintain or expand their jail capacities and offset the cost of the local criminal legal system—aligning many sheriffs and local officials with punitive immigration policies.
Hover over a point to view facility information. Click to display its graph.
Sometimes, efforts to reduce incarceration can be hindered when facilities—or units within them—that were previously used to hold people for the criminal legal system are repurposed for ICE detention.
For example, Louisiana passed criminal legal system reforms in June 2017, which decreased the number of people serving state prison sentences being held in local jails by 3,900 people by fall 2019. Yet during this same period, ICE rapidly expanded its presence in the state, detaining people in many of the facilities that were previously incarcerating people for the state prison system. ICE tripled the number of people in civil immigration detention in local jails, with a population increase of 6,400 additional people.
Zoom in on the map to view state and local trends.
Explore the data through this interactive dashboard or download the data through Vera’s GitHub repository. Click “X” to return to the tool.