On the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring that people in federal custody (including immigration detention) be placed in facilities based on their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity. Shortly thereafter, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed its 2015 “Transgender Care Memorandum” from its website and amended at least three detention facility contracts to remove transgender care requirements. At the same time, the Trump administration gutted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offices tasked with reviewing complaints by people in detention.

And under the radar, ICE has begun excluding congressionally mandated data on transgender people in immigration detention from its biweekly statistical reports. This omission is part of a pattern demonstrating the Trump administration’s hostility toward the lives and rights of transgender people and signals its broader attempts to evade oversight as it ramps up mass deportations and detention.

For transgender immigrants in ICE detention, the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrant communities and transgender people result in compounding harms. Immigration detention has long been criticized for its cruelty, and trans people in custody—in immigration detention centers as well as prisons and jails—are at heightened risk of verbal harassment, medical neglect including denial of gender-affirming care, worsening mental health, prolonged solitary confinement, and physical and sexual violence.

What the Trump administration is (and isn’t) doing

In fiscal year 2021, Congress began requiring that ICE publish biweekly statistics on the number of people in custody who are transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming. Starting on February 4, 2025—the first report published after President Trump began his second term—ICE omitted the required section on transgender population statistics. Congress’s 2021 mandate also required ICE to include statistics on the number of people in solitary confinement and the amount of time they have spent there—both of which the agency continues to report.

Figure 1 below shows an example of the section that is now entirely omitted from ICE’s biweekly reports. The last report to include such information was published on January 17, 2025. Language used is how ICE reports this information.

Figure 1. Example of Transgender Population Statistics Published in ICE’s January 17, 2025, Report

Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, file “FY25_detentionStats01162025.xlsx,” published on January 17, 2025, and archived by the Vera Institute of Justice.

Following the end of each quarter, ICE has typically updated another section, “Vulnerable and Special Population” segregation statistics, which includes—in aggregate with other specific populations—the number of people in solitary confinement who “self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or intersex (LGBTQI).” As of April 17, 2025, ICE struck its description of people who self-identify as LGBTQI and replaced it with the following text: “[those] who may be susceptible to harm in the general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression based on outward characteristics, behavior, or appearance.” This is part of a broader effort of federal agencies to scrub diversity-related terms and content from their websites and documents. As of May 2025, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review had also changed the variable “gender” to “sex” in its database of immigration court case records.

What we know from past ICE reports

On its website, ICE simply overwrites its biweekly reports on detention populations, resulting in a loss of information. Vera has archived years’ worth of these reports, which allows us to see certain statistics and trends—like the number of transgender people in ICE custody—over time. ICE’s statistics on the numbers of transgender people in detention were based on self-identification, and it is unclear exactly how such data was collected. However, transgender people do not always identify themselves to ICE, in part because of safety concerns. As such, these numbers have almost certainly been an undercount and should not be viewed as the total number of transgender people in ICE detention. Instead, these numbers should be viewed as the minimum number of people in detention who identify as transgender and who would therefore be impacted by anti-trans policies.

Between October 1, 2020, and January 12, 2025—the last date that they provided this data—ICE reported at least 700 book-ins of transgender people to detention. On the last day of that period, ICE reported that 47 transgender people were currently in its custody. Figure 2 shows a substantial increase in the number of transgender people “currently detained” reported in each ICE biweekly report since fiscal year 2021. While the number of people in detention overall also increased during this period, the reasons for changes in the number of transgender people in ICE detention can’t be concluded. The increase could be due to changes in the total number of transgender people in custody, changes in the likelihood of people self-identifying as transgender to ICE, changes in data collection or reporting practices, or a combination.

Figure 2. Number of People “Currently Detained” Who Self-Identified to ICE as Transgender

Eroding data transparency undermines oversight—making it harder to advocate for the rights of trans people in detention

Though these statistics offered only a limited understanding of the numbers of transgender people in detention, the government’s intentional exclusion of statistics mandated by Congress is part of a broader pattern to limit oversight measures and data transparency. (The DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics has also stopped publishing its monthly “Immigration Enforcement and Legal Processes” statistics, which were last updated on January 16, 2025.) Withholding information that should be public further enables ICE to continue to harm people behind closed doors with little accountability and signals the administration’s disregard for the safety of transgender immigrants.

It’s also important to name that ICE is still legally obligated to report out on this data on a biweekly basis. The underlying reporting requirements are still incorporated by reference into the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025. The implementing regulations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act and its underlying definitions also remain intact.

Congress must hold ICE accountable to comply with its obligations for data transparency to the public. And we mustn’t forget that behind every missing data point is a person—one who is often isolated and suffering. Given the heightened risks faced by transgender people in detention, Congress should at minimum require and enforce stronger standards of care for trans and nonbinary people in detention and, more pressingly, prohibit ICE from holding transgender people in detention at all.