ICE Arrests by State & Field Office

Understanding ICE Arrests

ICE administrative arrests are the first step in the deportation pipeline. An arrest occurs when an ICE ERO officer takes a noncitizen into custody, typically through targeted operations, detainer pickups from local jails, or worksite enforcement actions. Unlike criminal arrests by local police, ICE administrative arrests are civil immigration enforcement actions — the person is taken into immigration custody pending removal proceedings.

The Texas Concentration

Texas dominates ICE arrest statistics for several reasons. The state shares the longest border with Mexico, contains multiple ICE field offices (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso), and has policies favorable to ICE-local cooperation including honoring ICE detainers. Combined, Texas field offices accounted for over 158,000 arrests in FY2025 — roughly 35% of the national total.

By contrast, states with sanctuary policies like California and New York see lower arrest numbers relative to their unauthorized population. San Francisco's non-cooperation policies mean ICE must conduct more street arrests rather than picking up individuals from local jails, making enforcement more resource-intensive and less efficient.

Sanctuary Cities vs. ICE Operations

Despite non-cooperation policies, major sanctuary cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco still see significant ICE arrest activity. The difference is how arrests happen. In cooperative jurisdictions, ICE relies heavily on detainers — requests to local jails to hold individuals until ICE can pick them up. In sanctuary cities, ICE must use targeted enforcement operations: surveillance, home visits, and community arrests that often result in "collateral" arrests of bystanders who happen to be present.

This creates a paradox: sanctuary policies intended to protect communities can make enforcement less targeted and more disruptive. ICE argues that non-cooperation forces agents into neighborhoods rather than secure jail settings, while sanctuary advocates maintain that cooperation chills crime reporting and erodes community trust.

The FY2025 Surge

The 51% increase in arrests from FY2024 to FY2025 reflects the current administration's emphasis on interior enforcement. Contributing factors include expanded 287(g) agreements with local law enforcement, increased ICE staffing, resumed worksite enforcement operations, and executive orders prioritizing the arrest and removal of all removable noncitizens rather than just priority categories.

The FOIA data from the Deportation Data Project provides unprecedented transparency into these operations, showing not just totals but individual-level arrest records that reveal patterns in targeting, timing, and geographic concentration.

How to Read This Data

Field office numbers don't perfectly map to states — each field office has an Area of Responsibility (AOR) that may span multiple states. For example, the Chicago field office covers Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky, and Kansas. The state-level aggregation above uses the field office's headquarters state, so actual state-level numbers may differ. For more granular geographic data, see the full FOIA datasets from deportationdata.org.