Over 60,000 Are in Immigration Detention, a Modern High, Records Show

The number of people in immigration detention reached a new high of more than 60,000 on Monday, breaking a modern record set during the first Trump administration, according to internal records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The number of detained people has jumped since January, when about 39,000 people were in immigration detention, reflecting efforts by the Trump administration to quickly ramp up arrests and deportations. According to ICE records obtained by The New York Times, more than 1,100 people had been detained since Friday, about 380 people a day.

The capacity for immigration officers to detain people has grown rapidly since ICE was formed in 2003. Twenty years ago, the average daily population of detained immigrants was approximately 7,000, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The previous peak since the government’s current method of counting began was 55,654 in August 2019, during the first Trump administration.

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Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said that detention had grown rapidly under Mr. Trump compared with past administrations.

“Compared to past administrations’ records, this detention level is much, much higher — almost twice as many noncitizens are being detained now as were under President Obama,” she said.

But for as rapidly as detentions have risen, Ms. Bush-Joseph noted, the administration still remains far from its goal of 100,000 detention beds.