Since DetentionReports.com was launched in the Summer of 2025 by Adam Sawyer and his team at Relevant Research, it has become one of the leading resources for non-partisan, easy-to-understand data about ICE’s growing immigration detention system. The website uses a simple yet elegant method for finding the current average daily population of each detention facility using ICE’s biweekly detention spreadsheets—a method that is more consistent and up-to-date than waiting for FOIA data, which is far more detailed but released intermittently. Detention Reports goes further to include carefully-validated datapoints about each facility, copies of available detention contracts, and a user-friendly interface that saves the public time from downloading and processing ICE’s detention data on their own.
Detention Reports has been cited as a primary source in immigration reporting across a range of national, regional, and policy outlets, including The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, PBS, HuffPost, The New Republic, KQED, CalMatters, Colorado Public Radio, SFGate, El Paso Times, KPFA, Border Report, Investigative Post, American Community Media, the American Immigration Council, and many more. Notably, the site has been used by outlets from across the political spectrum, with progressive publications like Common Dreams and conservative think tanks like the Center for Immigration Studies both drawing on the same underlying data, a sign that the site is trusted across ideological lines. The site has also been picked up by Spanish-language outlets, with Excelsior California and Enlace Latino NC both publishing pieces grounded in its data, a sign that it is reaching the immigrant communities most directly affected by ICE enforcement.
After nine months of development and a trove of user feedback, Detention Reports recently received an overhaul that brings many design and functionality improvements while maintaining the static website philosophy that makes the site simple and stable. This redesign arrives at a moment when ICE detention has grown dramatically. With new enforcement funding likely to come through Congress in the coming weeks (or even days), the detained population may grow even further. Detention Reports has become one of the primary public tools for tracking this expansion over time, which is why keeping the site actively maintained, continually improved, and accessible to as many people as possible is core to our mission.
Adam and I would like to walk you through the changes to the site and encourage you to visit it today. Send comments, concerns, and questions to Adam Sawyer
Adam and I want to walk you through what’s new. The redesign reflects nine months of feedback from the journalists, attorneys, advocates, researchers, and family members of detained people who use the site every day, and many of the changes you’ll see below started as their suggestions. In the sections that follow, we cover the new homepage, the redesigned map and search tools, the mobile experience, the updated about page, simplified facility URLs, and a new chart tracking the mandatory detention population.
The new Detention Reports homepage provides much more information in one place than the previous site. The map has been redesigned and moved to the left side with geography search tools. A new color coding system for the size of detention facilities was introduced, including a new grey option for facilities that were in ICE’s facilities list in the past but haven’t been updated with new data. The facilities list is no longer sorted alphabetically by default; now it is sorted by current population size with a new option for sorting by several variables. The colors are consistent across Detention Reports and the Immigration Enforcement Dashboard.
Author:Austin Kocher
Each of the detention facility “cards” includes more information than before, as well. The facility common name and location (city, state, and zip) are still there, but the cards now display the total current population (using the Interval ADP approach), the date of last updated data, and a bar that varies by color and length to make it easier to identify the relative size of each facility.The filter includes common options for sorting the growing list of detention facilities by name, current population, and how recently the data for the facility was updated.On wide screens, the improved map appears on the left hand side of the screen, but the website scales to narrower screens, as well. The facility color scheme is consistent with the facility cards. Clicking on any marker will open the report for that facility—although note that some facilities with a shared general name, like “Adelanto”, are actually multiple facilities that are clustered very close together.
The geographic search options help to zero in on a specific state, city, or facility name. The results of filtering and searching are reflected both in the map and in the list of facilities. For example, a search for facilities in Georgia will automatically zoom in on the state and return the results to the right.