Timeline of immigration detention in the United States

This timeline covers immigration detention in the United States.

It is a complement to the timeline of immigration enforcement in the United States and timeline of immigrant processing and visa policy in the United States.

See also List of detention sites in the United States for a list of detention centers.

Visual data

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The image below shows Google Trends data in United States for Immigration detention in the United States (Topic) from January 2004 to March 2021, when the screenshot was taken. Interest is also ranked by state and displayed on map.

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The chart below shows pageviews of the English Wikipedia article Immigration detention in the United States, on desktop, mobile-web, desktop-spider, mobile-web-spider and mobile app from July 2015; to February 2021.

Full timeline

For the affected agencies column: ICE is shorthand for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; CBP is shorthand for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Year	Month and date (if available)	Event type	Affected agencies (past, and present equivalents)	Details
1892		Immigration inspection station		Ellis Island becomes an immigration inspection station, handling immigrants arriving via the Atlantic. Immigrants could be temporarily detained upon arrival for closer examination, or to hold till they are deported.
1902		Immigration inspection station		The Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital is opened. It is both a general hospital and a contagious disease hospital. It also serves as a detention facility for new immigrants deemed unfit to enter the United States or held back for further examination.
1910		Immigration inspection station		Angel Island Immigration Station, an immigrant inspection facility with a detention center, opens for operations. It handles immigrants arriving via the Pacific.
1984		Detention center	ICE	The Varick Street Federal Detention Facility opens in Manhattan, New York. The detention center would ultimately be closed in 2010 after protests by inmates and pressure from advocacy groups.
1996	April 24	Legislation (adjacent)	Executive branch	The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is signed into law by President Bill Clinton after passing both chambers of the 104th United States Congress. Though not focused on migration, the Act has provisions related to the removal and exclusion of alien terrorists and modification of asylum procedures. It creates more reasons to detain migrants and is one of the factors responsible for an increase in immigration detention in the coming years.
1996	September 30	Legislation (landmark)	Immigration and Naturalization Services	Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 is signed into law by President Bill Clinton after passing both chambers of the 104th United States Congress. It includes a number of provisions facilitating various forms of immigration enforcement that would be rolled out over the next two decades. One of its provisions that expands immigration detention is the addition of Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g), which allows state and local law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration law on the condition that they are trained and monitored by ICE.
1997	January 28	Agreement	Executive branch	During the presidency of Bill Clinton, an agreement is reached regarding the permissible conditions for detaining child migrants, commonly called the Flores Agreement or Flores Settlement. This is a follow-up to the Supreme Court case Reno v. Flores. The three obligations identified for the government are: (1) The government is required to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to, in order of preference, parents, other adult relatives, or licensed programs willing to accept custody. (2)If a suitable placement is not immediately available, the government is obligated to place children in the "least restrictive" setting appropriate to their age and any special needs. (3) The government must implement standards relating to the care and treatment of children in immigration detention.
2000	000000002024-09-01-0000September	Detention standards	ICE	A set of National Detention Standards (NDS) is issued that establishes "consistent conditions of confinement, program operations and management expectations" within the immigration detention system. These would be the operational standards for detention centers to strive for until the introduction of new standards (PBNDS) in 2008.
2001	June 28	Court ruling		Zadvydas v. Davis is decided. The court rules that the plenary power doctrine does not authorize the indefinite detention of immigrants under order of deportation whom no other country will accept. To justify detention of immigrants for a period longer than six months, the government was required to show removal in the foreseeable future or special circumstances.
2003	March 1	Organizational restructuring	Immigration and Naturalization Services and U.S. Department of Homeland Security	The Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) (that was under the Department of Justice) is disbanded. Its functions are divided into three sub-agencies of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
2003		Detention center		The Willacy County Regional Detention Center opens for operations in Raymondville, Texas, operated by Management and Training Corporation under contract with the United States Marshal Service.
2004		Detention center		The Stewart Detention Center opens for operations in Lumpkin, Georgia.
2004		Detention center		The Northwest Detention Center opens for operations in Tacoma, Washington, operated by Correctional Services Corporation on contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
2004	000000002024-12-17-0000December 17	Detention capacity	DHS (ICE)	The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 directs DHS to increase by 8,000 in each of the Fiscal Years from 2005 to 2010 the number of beds available for immigration detention and removal operations of DHS. It also requires priority for the use of these additional beds to the detention of individuals charged with removability or inadmissibility on security and related grounds.
2005	000000002024-05-01-0000May	Detention center		The South Texas Detention Facility, a privately operated prison, opens for operation in Pearsall, Texas as the Pearsall Immigration Detention Center. The prison houses people for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as United States Marshal Service.
2005	000000002024-10-01-0000October	Detention capacity		Michael Chertoff, then Secretary of Homeland Security, calls for an increase in detention center capacity so that the United States immigration enforcement can hold people in detention between the time of catching them and the time of their immigration hearings, and does not need to resort to catch and release.
2006	000000002024-07-01-0000July			Chertoff indicates in House committee testimony that an infusion of funding for more immigration detention has allowed DHS to detain almost all non-Mexican illegal immigrants.
2006	000000002024-10-04-0000October 4	Detention capacity		When signing the DHS Appropriations Act of 2007, then-President George W. Bush notes that the funding in the Act will allow the addition of at least 6,700 new beds in detention centers, which would help continue to cut down on the use of catch-and-release policies.
2007	000000002024-06-08-0000June 8	Detention capacity		In a report accompanying the DHS Appropriations Act of 2008, the House Committee on Appropriations writes that it supports ICE's requested funding for increasing its detention capacity from 27,500 beds to 28,450 beds (an incrase of 950), based on written and oral statements that this increase is sufficient to maintain ICE practice of "repatriating all illegal crossers apprehended at the borders."
2008		Detention standards	ICE	ICE revises its National Detention Standards (NDS) released in 2000 to create a new set of standards called Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS), that, "developed in coordination with agency stakeholders, prescribe both the expected outcomes of each detention standard and the expected practices required to achieve them." These would be the operational standards till the release of revised standards in 2011.
2008	000000002024-10-01-0000October	Detention center	ICE, New York City Bar Association	The New York City Bar Association receives a petition signed by 100 men in the Varick Street Federal Detention Facility in Manhattan, New York, describing "cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day" according to a New York Times' article published in November 2009.
2009	000000002024-10-28-0000October 28	Detention capacity	ICE	The DHS Appropriations Act of 2009, for the first time, imposes a "bed mandate" on ICE based on language suggested by Senator Robert Byrd. Specifically, it says: "That funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 33,400 detention beds through September 30, 2010." The capacity would drop to 32,800 in Fiscal Year 2012 and increase to 34,000 in Fiscal Year 2015, and fluctuate further in the coming years. There would later be comments by politicians claiming that the mandate requires ICE to fill the capacity every day, but fact-checking by the Washington Post<reef name=wp-bed-quota-fact-check> and PolitiFact would reject that inference.
2009	000000002024-11-02-0000November 2	Detention center	ICE, New York City Bar Association (City Bar Justice Center)	A report by the City Bar Justice Center of the New York City Bar Association calls for all immigrant detainees to be provided with counsel. Later in the month, an article in Fordham Law Review looks at the Varick Street detention facility as a case study in systematic barriers to legal representation.
2010	000000002024-02-01-0000February (approx)	Detention center	ICE	ICE announces its plans to close the Varick Street Federal Detention Facility in Manhattan, New York and relocate those currently held in it to prisons in New Jersey; Varick Street would only be used as a temporary holding location for a maximum of 12 hours per person. However, plans to close the place run into trouble due to challenges relocating people with medical and mental health challenges. While there are some positive reactions, advocates push for deeper structural changes whereby people would be detained less; concerns are also raised about how relocating detainees would deprive them of their existing relationships with counsel based in New York.
2011		Detention standards	ICE	ICE releases an updated version of its Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) for its detention centers. ICE states that "PBNDS 2011 is crafted to improve medical and mental health services, increase access to legal services and religious opportunities, improve communication with detainees with limited English proficiency, improve the process for reporting and responding to complaints, and increase recreation and visitation."
2011	000000002024-08-01-0000August	Detention center	ICE	The East Wing of the Adelanto Detention Center, a detention facility managed by GEO Group for ICE, opens for operation. The facility had previously been a state prison for adult male inmates before the GEO Group purchased it in 2010 and contracted with ICE in May 2011 to use it for immigration detention. The West Wing would open in July 2012.
2013		Detention center	CBP (Border Patrol)	Clint Border Patrol Station opens as a migrant detention facility four miles north of the Mexico-U.S. border in Clint, Texas. It would be called "the public face of the chaos on America’s southern border" in a 2019 New York Times piece.
2014		Detention center	CBP	The Ursula detention center (official name "Central Processing Center"), the largest detention center operated by Customs and Border Protection, opens for operation in McAllen, Texas. In June 2018, it gained notoriety for the practice of keeping children in large cages made of chain-link fencing.
2014	000000002024-12-01-0000December	Detention center (family detention)		The South Texas Family Residential Center opens in Dilley, South Texas. It has a capacity of 2,400 and is intended to detain mainly women and children from Central America. It is managed by the Corrections Corporation of America.
2016		Detention standards	ICE	ICE revises its 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) to "ensure consistency with federal legal and regulatory requirements as well as prior ICE policies and policy statements." The revision is reflected through updates in the 2011 PBNDS on the ICE website, rather than a separate set of standards.
2016	000000002024-10-27-0000October 27	Detention center	ICE	The Nation reports that the Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, Cibola County, New Mexico is reopening as an immigration detention center under contract with ICE, just a month after losing its contract as a minimum-security prison for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the United States Marshals Service.
2016	000000002024-11-21-0000November 21	Report	ICE	A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center finds that "detainees are routinely denied their due process rights and frequently endure inhumane conditions in isolated facilities that have little oversight from the federal government."
2018	000000002024-06-14-0000June 14	Detention center (temporary shelter)	DHS/ICE	The Tornillo tent city appears to have started operation around this time, as a temporary shelter to detain migrants. It would be shut down in January 2019.
2018		Detention statistics	ICE	ICE begins publishing detainee deaths within 90 days of each death. This is because "Congressional requirements described in the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Bill (2018) require ICE to make public all reports regarding an in-custody death within 90 days." The first reported death is for April 10, 2018. Some immigrant justice and advocacy groups consider these reports to be shams that are more notifications of death than actual analyses of the cause of death.
2019		Detention standards	ICE	ICE releases its 2019 National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities. According to ICE: "These detention standards will apply to the approximately 45 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGSA) facilities currently operating under the NDS, approximately 35 United States Marshals Service (USMS) facilities used by ICE and which ICE inspects against the NDS, as well as approximately 60 facilities (both IGSA and USMS) which do not reach the threshold for ICE annual inspections – generally those with an Average Daily Population of less than 10."
2020		Detention standards	ICE	ICE releases its 2020 Family Residential Standards.