Hiding in Plain Sight: How local jails obscure and facilitate mass deportation under Trump
(for the Prison Policy Initiative )
Local jails have become an essential part of implementing President Trump’s mass arrest and deportation agenda. That’s because in most states, local jails are the only facilities available for holding people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Marshals Service — the agency responsible for handling the pretrial detention of people facing federal criminal charges.
This essential collaboration between local jails and federal agencies has helped the Trump administration overcome resistance to mass deportation. Immigration rights advocates have long sought “sanctuary” policies that limit collaboration with federal immigration authorities by restricting counties’ ability to contract with ICE or by otherwise eliminating ICE detention facilities in their state. Yet the Trump administration’s prosecution priorities have created a situation in which every county with a U.S. Marshals contract is effectively signed up for his mass detention and deportation agenda regardless of whether they have sanctuary policies on their books. That’s because of a longstanding loophole: ICE and other federal agencies can refer people for federal prosecution on immigration-related “crimes” and thus use contracted local jails in sanctuary cities, counties, and states. In doing so, the Trump administration is transforming what are normally civil immigration matters into more serious federal crimes. This shift hides the true scale of immigrant detention from public view, which is often reported as only those in ICE custody and does not include those facing criminal prosecution.
While ICE detention data recorded 57,200 people on average in June 2025, a broader count of people detained shows the overall crimmigration system is 45% larger, at around 83,400 people. This conservative estimate is likely an undercount, meaning far more immigrants are in detention than previously understood. The vast majority of the people detained off of ICE’s books are being held in order to face the onslaught of criminal immigration charges described above.