U.S. immigration authorities are holding some 73,000 people in detention, the highest number in history, according to data leaked Friday to CBS News.
The figures reveal an 84% increase in the number of arrests compared to the same period last year, before President Donald Trump took office with a series of anti-immigrant policies focused on detaining and deporting as many individuals as possible.
Immigration record with more than 70,000 detainees
According to the data leaked to the portal, less than half (47%) of the detainees have a criminal record in the US.
The Republican administration has insisted in recent months that its plan is to increase detention capacity – by opening more facilities or expanding existing ones – to an average of 100,000 people each day.
Last year, with the passage of the budget dubbed by Trump as the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received a multi-year funding package of nearly $191 billion, the largest amount of funding this agency has received since it was founded in 2002.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received a huge funding increase in 2025 through the “One Big, Beautiful One Bill Act” (OBBBA), totaling about $178 billion in a single supplemental package, the largest in history, focused heavily on border security, immigration enforcement (ICE, CBP), detention and new barriers, after years of significant budget increases for these areas.
Conditions in migrant detention centers have been described as “inhumane” by human rights organizations, including the ACLU and Amnesty International, which have revealed physical and psychological abuse of detainees, as well as overcrowding.
And 2025 was the deadliest year in at least two decades for people in ICE custody, with more than 30 people killed inside these facilities.
In the first 10 days of 2026, at least four migrants have died in the custody of U.S. immigration authorities, all in facilities used by ICE, including a center at the Fort Bliss military base in Texas.
Filed under: Record migration
With information from EFE
