For a Few Days, ICE Bragged About Daily Arrest Stats. Then, They Stopped.

ICE's "X" account gave details about just 0.35% of the people it arrested.

Beginning on January 23, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began posting on X daily national arrest data. For my sins, I began keeping track of what they were posting. And then, after posting arrest data for January 31, they stopped.

In addition to (briefly) giving daily arrest figures, ICE also posted highlights about individual people they arrested, itemizing their “crimes.” These posts have continued, though it remains unclear whether many of the “crimes” and gang memberships alleged have ever been proven in any kind of court before ICE decided to tweet about them. Are these convictions? Allegations? Urban legends? Who knows.

For that brief and special period when they were reporting daily arrest numbers, ICE-on-X gave criminal background of any kind about only 29 out of the 8,276 people they said they arrested. That’s 0.35 percent.

Have I told you before about mass deportation theater?

Scholar Austin Kocher, who has forgotten more about ICE data than I will ever know, raised some questions about the reliability of the daily arrest data that ICE was reporting. I suggest you read that, especially if ICE resumes X-boasting about their arrest totals. The fact that they suddenly stopped the daily reporting might lend some added weight to questions Kocher raised.

If the daily data that they reported was accurate, it would appear that ICE increased arrests nationally quite significantly for that very short period of time. And we have good reason to think that ICE is being increasingly indiscriminate about who they arrest — up to and including U.S. citizens and teenagers with legal status. The citizens that ICE has targeted often seem to turn out to be Puerto Ricans. I’m sure that’s just random, amirite?

But the fact that they reported daily data only briefly raises many questions. As does the fact that it is already clear that many of those they arrested during this initial flurry of activity were quickly let go. You might even say: This was a catch-and-release operation.

Even for this brief period, ICE was offering a limited glimpse only at the front-end of the interior enforcement system. It wasn’t clear how many they were detaining for more than a day or two. It wasn’t clear how many new deportation cases they were filing in Immigration Court. And it wasn’t clear how many actual deportations they actually carried out. All we could see - maybe - was a brief increase in initial arrests.

For what it’s worth, the last three days of the national arrest data that they did report showed daily declines in the number of arrests ICE was able to carry out. They peaked at 1179 on January 27, but had dropped to 864 by January 31. That is way too small a sample size to be sure what was happening. But it is consistent with the theory that they couldn’t sustain the higher arrest numbers, and if they had continued posting it would have become embarrassing for the deportation-lusting MAGA faithful (some of whom were already complaining online). A brief sampling of their complaints:

Eventually we’ll get more complete data, probably. And then we will have a better sense of what ICE was and is actually doing. A major ramp up in deportations - including something we might fairly call “mass deportation” - remains possible and may be happening. But for now, everything we are seeing is consistent with two known facts:

1. Mass deportation would require a massive expansion of logistical capacity, which hasn’t happened yet and will take time and money.

2. ICE is under immense pressure from Trump and his base to show mass deportation from Week One, even if they can’t really sustain it.

These two factors pose at least a short-term problem for ICE. But it’s a problem that they can try to solve through public displays of deportation adjacent activity, even if they can’t sustain higher numbers just yet.

Like I said, welcome to mass deportation theater.