Report: Immigration Detention Is Bigger, Harsher, and Less Accountable Than Ever 

Trump Administration Targets People with No Criminal Record and Uses Detention to Pressure Them to Give Up Their Cases 

Washington DC, Jan. 14 Wednesday — A new report released today by the American Immigration Council shows that the Trump administration is locking up hundreds of thousands of people— most with no criminal record—into a harsh immigration detention system that makes it near impossible to fight their cases or secure release.  

READ THE REPORT HERE.

The report, Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term, reveals how historic funding increases and aggressive enforcement tactics have pushed immigration detention to the highest level in U.S. history. Rather than addressing serious public safety threats, the government is spending billions on mass detention to pressure people who pose no threat to give up their cases and accept deportation. 

As the Trump administration expands its mass deportation agenda, the consequences extend far beyond detention centers. DHS’s aggressive tactics during large-scale enforcement actions in American neighborhoods around the country have already led to tragic, preventable deaths, revealing the human cost of an immigration enforcement system that operates with little oversight or accountability. 

“This has absolutely nothing to do with law and order. Under mass deportation, we’re seeing the construction of a mass immigration detention system on a scale the United States has never seen, in which people with no criminal record are routinely locked up with no clear path to release,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Over the next three years, billions of more dollars will be poured into a detention system that is on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system. The goal is not public safety, but to pressure people into giving up their rights and accepting deportation.” 

READ THE REPORT HERE.

According to the report, the number of people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention rose nearly 75 percent in 2025, climbing from roughly 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by the start of December, the highest level ever recorded. And with Congress authorizing $45 billion dollars in new detention funding, the report warns that the system could more than triple in size over the next four years. 

Major findings of the report include: 

• There is a dramatic shift in who is being detained. Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450 percent in Trump’s first year, driven by increases in tactics like “at-large” arrests, roving patrols, worksite raids, and re-arrests of people attending immigration court hearings or ICE check-ins. The percent of people arrested by ICE and held in detention with no criminal record rose from 6 percent in January to 41 percent by December. 

• The detention system has expanded so rapidly that already deleterious conditions have worsened. Through the start of December, ICE was using over 100 more facilities to detain immigrants than at the start of the year. For the first time ever, thousands of immigrants arrested in the interior are being detained in hastily-constructed tent camps, where conditions are brutal. More people died in ICE detention in 2025 than in the last four years combined. 

• People are stripped of their chance to ask a judge for release. New policies have made prolonged, indefinite detention the norm. The Trump administration is pursuing policies that strip millions of people, if they are detained, of the right to have a bond hearing where they can make a case to be released into their community while their immigration case is under review, including for those with decades of life in the United States.  

• The administration is using detention to drive up deportations. By November 2025, for every person released from ICE detention, more than fourteen were deported directly from custody. This is compared to an approximate one-to-two ratio from a year earlier.   

• As the administration expands detention, it is simultaneously gutting oversight. The rapid growth of detention has been paired with deep cuts to internal watchdogs and new restrictions on congressional inspections. This erosion of oversight has consequences that extend beyond detention facilities themselves: as ICE is operating with fewer checks on its authority, aggressive interior enforcement in cities has led to preventable harm and deaths, underscoring how a lack of accountability is putting lives at risk.  

“The Trump administration continues to falsely claim it’s going after the ‘worst of the worst,’ but public safety is just a pretext for locking up immigrants and pushing them to abdicate their cases,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “Horrific conditions inside detention facilities break people into accepting deportation which fuels the administration’s inhumane deportation quotas and goals.” 

The report profiles three people whose experiences illustrate the real-world impact of this historic expansion of detention: 

• A green card holder and father of two, detained by ICE at an airport because of a past conviction he was told would not jeopardize his legal status. ICE then neglected his medical issues for months while he was detained. 

• An asylum seeker who was granted humanitarian protection by an immigration judge, yet remains detained months later, without explanation, as ICE seeks to deport her to a third country, and who says she was treated better in federal prison when serving time for an immigration offense.  

• A DACA recipient, detained following a criminal arrest, who was transferred repeatedly across the country as ICE searched for available bed space and witnessed consistently poor conditions across multiple different detention centers. 

With billions of additional dollars already approved, the report warns that immigration detention is poised to grow even larger, deepening the human, legal, and financial costs for families, communities, and the country as a whole. 

“This is a system built to produce deportations, not justice,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “When detention becomes the default response to immigration cases, the costs are borne by everyone. Families are torn apart, due process is set aside, and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on these unnecessary and cruel policies that do nothing to increase public safety.”