ICE’s Karnes County detention facility had 1,680 immigrants in custody as of Feb. 8, according to new data. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in Texas are holding more immigrants than those in any other state, newly released data show.

Of the nearly 39,000 people detained nationwide by ICE as of Feb. 8, a total of 12,259 were being held in the Lone Star State, according to information from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). That’s just shy of a third of the federal agency’s total number of people in detention.

The states with the second and third highest number of detainees, in respective order, are Louisiana with 6,880 and California with 3,025.

While the Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi, holds the most ICE detainees, an average of 2,154 per day, many of ICE’s most heavily populated detention are concentrated in Texas, TRAC records show.

The South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, an hour southwest of San Antonio, held a daily average of 1,680 people as of Feb. 8, the most of any Texas site. Meanwhile, the Montgomery ICE Processing Center near Houston held an average of 1,229 people and the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center, an hour southeast of the Alamo City, held an average of 1,130.

Despite assurances from Trump administration border czar Tom Homan that ICE’s enforcement actions will target criminals in the country illegally, roughly 54.7% of the immigrants in the agency’s custody as of Feb. 9 had no criminal record. Being undocumented is considered a civil offense, not a criminal one.

“Many more [detainees] have only minor offenses, including traffic violations,” according to TRAC’s report.

TRAC is nonprofit, nonpartisan organization affiliated with Syracuse University that collects and shares data on federal agencies. Its latest ICE detention figures were first reported by the online news outlet Border Report.

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This article appears in Feb 19-25, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...