70.6% of the 65,765 people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction — the July 2026 data

70.6% of people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction

The finding: as of July 11, 2026, ICE held 65,765 people in detention nationwide. By ICE’s own classification, 46,436 of them — 70.6% — had no criminal conviction: 20,247 had pending criminal charges and 26,189 had an immigration violation only, with no criminal charge at all. The remaining 19,329 (29.4%) had a criminal conviction. Every figure here comes from ICE’s own Detention Management spreadsheet, released July 20, 2026.

Release check, October 9, 2026: the ICE Detention Management page still links the same FY2026 file (released July 20, 2026) and shows “Updated: 07/20/2026”. No newer FY2026 file is posted, so the July 11, 2026 snapshot above is still ICE’s latest published count, 90 days old on the date of this check.

What changed since April

ICE publishes only the current snapshot; it does not publish the change. We bank each release, so the movement is visible here:

All of the growth is interior enforcement. The detained population grew by 5,454 over roughly 14 weeks, but ICE-arrested detainees grew by 6,803 while CBP-arrested detainees fell by 1,349. In other words, interior arrests more than accounted for the entire increase and offset a decline in border-arrest detentions. The share of detainees arrested by ICE rather than CBP rose from 85.3% to 88.5%.

The no-conviction share barely moved — 70.8% to 70.6% — so the composition of who is detained stayed roughly constant while the population grew.

What the data shows

• Roughly seven in ten have no conviction. The 70.6% with no criminal conviction breaks into 30.8% with pending charges and 39.8% with an immigration violation only. Just under a third — 29.4% — had a criminal conviction on record.
• Most were arrested by ICE, not at the border. Of the 65,765 detained, 58,231 (88.5%) were arrested by ICE in the interior and 7,534 (11.5%) by Customs and Border Protection.
• The largest facilities by average daily population (FY2026) are ICE’s El Paso Camp East Montana (about 2,026), Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia (2,010), Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi (1,878), the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall (1,703), and the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California (1,686).
• Length of stay varies enormously. Among the 156 facilities in ICE’s July 20, 2026 file that have their own page on this site, the FY2026 year-to-date average length of stay runs from about 2 days (1.8) to about 86 days (85.8), with a median of about 35.6 days.
• 156 facilities carry their own numbers. ICE’s spreadsheet reports facility-level statistics for 208 facilities; 156 of them match a facility page on this site, each of which shows that facility’s own FY2026 average daily population and length of stay.

Criminal record by arresting agency (July 11, 2026 snapshot)

ICE’s spreadsheet also crosses the criminality categories with the agency that made the arrest. The two groups look different:

• CBP-arrested detainees are the group with the fewest convictions. 4,514 of the 7,534 people CBP arrested (59.9%) had an immigration violation only, and 6,248 (82.9%) had no conviction on record.
• Among ICE-arrested detainees, the three categories are close to even thirds. 40,188 of 58,231 (69.0%) had no conviction on record.
• Convictions sit overwhelmingly with ICE arrests. 18,043 of the 19,329 detainees with a conviction (93.3%) were arrested by ICE.

Percentages are each cell divided by its column total, rounded half-up to one decimal. The cell values come from the “Detention FY26” sheet of ICE’s file; each row and column adds up to the national totals shown in the chart above.

How ICE is processing the people it holds

The same snapshot also sorts the 65,765 detainees by the legal process ICE started for them:

ICE’s footnotes say the Other category “may include, but are not limited to” administrative removal, Visa Waiver Program removal, stowaways and crewmembers. For where immigration court cases are heard, see immigration courts by state.

How to read ICE’s file

ICE’s footnotes to the July 20, 2026 spreadsheet set the rules for every number on this page:

• Snapshot vs. year-to-date. The national count and its breakdowns are “a snapshot as of 07/11/2026”. The facility averages are “FY2026 YTD” figures “updated through 07/11/2026”.
• What average daily population measures. ADP is built from a midnight head count: each person in an ERO detention facility at the midnight count is one “manday”, and ADP is the mandays in a period divided by the days in that period.
• Who is excluded. ICE detention data “exclude ORR transfers/facilities, as well as U.S. Marshals Service Prisoners”.
• When the criminal label is set. Each category is defined by what was “entered into ICE systems of record at the time of the enforcement action”. A conviction or charge entered later does not move a person between categories in that definition.
• Who counts as an ICE arrest. The ICE arresting agency covers ERO and HSI programs, and ICE’s list includes the 287g Program, so arrests made under 287(g) agreements count as ICE arrests here. See our 287(g) agreements dataset for those agreements.
• Numbers can be revised. ICE states that its data “fluctuate until ’locked’ at the conclusion of the fiscal year”. A later file can change a figure that ICE already published.

What this means in practice

These are operational statistics, not commentary. If you are trying to locate or support someone in detention, the facility-by-facility detail is on our ICE detention facilities cluster — each page lists the verified address, phone, the ICE Online Detainee Locator, visitation rules, and the facility’s FY2026 average daily population and length of stay. People in detention have a case before the immigration court (EOIR); for what rights apply during an ICE encounter, see Know Your Rights.

Method and caveat

The numbers are parsed directly from ICE’s Detention Management spreadsheet and republished without adjustment. Three distinctions keep them honest. First, the 65,765 detained total and the criminality split are a same-day snapshot (July 11, 2026), while the per-facility average daily population and average length of stay are fiscal-year-2026 averages, not same-day counts — they answer different questions. Second, ICE’s spreadsheet lists only facilities meeting its reporting threshold (208 in the July 20, 2026 file), so the facility figures are not an exhaustive roster, and the sum of facility populations does not equal the national snapshot. Third, the April-to-July comparison is snapshot-to-snapshot, not an average over the period — the population moves between releases, so the change is the difference between two single days, not a trend line. The dataset and charts are regenerated from the source file on every site build. ICE, however, publishes on no fixed schedule: its most recent FY2026 release is still the July 20, 2026 file (checked October 9, 2026), so this page is only as current as ICE’s last release. Derived percentages and medians on this page are rounded half-up to one decimal.

Download the data: ice_detention_stats.json — national totals plus facility-level average daily population and length of stay, keyed to each facility page.

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A newsroom, a legal-aid org, a researcher’s blog: drop in the national ICE detention count, the criminality breakdown, and — the part nobody else publishes — how much it changed since ICE’s previous release. The widget shows the latest ICE release we have banked, stamped with its release date, plus the change since the previous release. ICE publishes on no fixed schedule — its most recent FY2026 file is dated July 20, 2026 — so the widget updates when ICE does, not on a cadence. Paste it once and it follows our banked releases:

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Suggested citation: MigrantUSA, “ICE detention population analysis,” migrantusa.com/datasets/ice-detention-population/, retrieved [date], from ICE Detention Management data.

Related

• ICE detention facility movement — which facilities grew, shrank, entered or left ICE’s report between releases
• ICE detention facilities — every facility, with address, phone, locator, and FY2026 statistics
• 287(g) growth analysis — how local police were deputized for immigration enforcement
• Immigration courts by state — where detained people’s cases are heard
• Find an immigration attorney — how to find licensed and accredited help (no commission, no paid placement)

This is general information, not legal advice. These are ICE’s own operational statistics; they say nothing about any individual case. Consult an attorney for your specific situation.