The latest federal data shows the number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody increased to 37,395 as of early September, largely because of increased ICE and Customs and Border Protection arrests. This is a 3.13% increase compared to data reported in late August.
It’s also the first month there has been an increase in ICE detention numbers since June — which is when President Joe Biden’s asylum executive order was implemented.
The order prevents migrants seeking asylum from entering the U.S. when the number of crossings reaches a certain threshold. And after it went into effect, the total number of ICE detainees dropped for the following two months.
ICE book-ins to detention facilities have been on the rise throughout much of the fiscal year. But that wasn’t true of CBP book-ins until this month, when they saw their first increase since May. Altogether, there were 24,696 separate book-ins to detention in August.
SmartLink smartphone technology continues to be the tool ICE uses most often to track immigrants, primarily because it is more cost-effective than GPS ankle or wrist monitors. ICE is now using SmartLink to track approximately 151,000 individuals, down from nearly 178,000 reported in late September 2023.
Meanwhile, ICE is increasingly using GPS devices worn on the ankle or wrist to monitor migrants. While ICE was monitoring 11,000 individuals with these GPS devices at this time last year, the latest data shows that the number has doubled. The Chicago-area office has the largest number of individuals monitored via ICE’s Alternatives to Detention monitoring programs.
A large portion of detainees are currently being held in Texas facilities, according to the ICE data. The South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas, has held the highest number of ICE detainees in FY 2024, with an average of 1,580 individuals on a given day.
An important piece to note about ICE latest detainee data is that 60.1% of the 37,395 individuals held as of Sept. 8 have no criminal record. Many others have only minor offenses, such as traffic violations.
For more about this data, read more on TRAC or check out the tabled data here.
