Notes
About Detention Reports
These reports use the Interval Average Daily Population calculation to estimate recent numbers of detainees at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities across the United States and its Territories.
The reports use numbers compiled from the semi-monthly data updates released by ICE. These data can be found in the “Facilities” tab in the xlsx file at the bottom of the “ICE Detention Management” website here.
For more information about Interval ADP, you can see our white paper published here.
Relevant Research announced the new DetentionReports.com platform on July 28, 2025.
We hope to do some remodeling soon. In the meantime, any feedback can be directed to Adam at [email protected].
Ongoing Data Processing Notes
September 2, 2025
No special data processing steps were necessary for this release.
August 18, 2025
ICE resumed publishing average population figures with decimals. The decision to round to integers in the previous release (see below, August 4, 2025) does create inconsistencies here, too. Users will note that the Overall Interval ADP may differ significantly from the disaggregation categories: Security Classification, Gender, and Criminality.
These discrepancies are most apparent at 1) smaller facilities and/or 2) facilities with large fluctuations in the number of book ins/book outs over the last two weeks.
August 4, 2025
Typically, disaggregated average daily population numbers released by ICE include decimals, allowing each of the three separate reporting categories – Security Classification, Gender/Criminal Status, and ICE Threat Level – to sum to equal population values. In this release, ICE rounded all population numbers to the nearest integer.
This has meant that one category might show a higher population than another category by one or two people, despite the fact that both systems of classification report on the same number of individuals detained. To put it differently, ICE released up to three different average daily population figures per facility.
For the purposes of calculating Interval ADP, that difference of 1 or 2 can create discrepancies of 14 or even 28 people when calculating the population for each facility between July 22 and August 4.
To mitigate the impact of this reporting style, we have decided to take the average of the three categories and treat that number as the official Average Daily Population as reported by ICE. We then computed the Interval ADP for July 22 to August 4 based on that equally-weighted number.
The rounding discrepancy causes nonsensical numbers for the disaggregation categories: security classification, gender, and criminal status. This was particularly true for facilities which hold fewer people in total. We will not report any subpopulation Interval ADP for detention facilities which held an average of 14 or fewer individuals over the last interval (the 14 days between July 2 and August 4).
One facility listed by ICE on this date featured population averages that were impossibly low:
- Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility
Population numbers reported by ICE for this facility have been excluded from the dataset for this date.
July 21, 2025
One facility listed by ICE on this date featured population averages that were impossibly low:
- Northwest Regional Corrections Center
Population numbers reported by ICE for this facility have been excluded from the dataset for this date.
As originally published, Miami Federal Detention featured inaccurate Interval ADP numbers. This was corrected on August 7, 2025.
July 7, 2025
More than half (96 out of 172) of the facilities listed by ICE on this date featured population averages that were impossibly low. While it’s quite possible that ICE released correct populations for other facilities, the pervasiveness of the error has forced us to drop this entire dataset from release.
June 23, 2025
Four facilities listed by ICE on this date featured population averages that were impossibly high:
- Fayette County Detention Center
- La Paz County Adult Detention Facility
- Lexington County Jail
- New Hanover County Jail
Population numbers reported by ICE for these four facilities have been excluded from the dataset for this date.
A fifth detention facility had two entries for this release with differing population values:
- Nassau County Correctional Center
Upon the passage of time and the inclusion of more data, we have selected the entry with the lower ADP value for this week as it comports more consistently with population releases before and after June 23.