Between January 1 and February 28, 2026, ICE arrested 16,033 people in Texas. That is an average of 272 arrests per day statewide. January was busier: 8,955 arrests, or 289 per day. February dropped to 7,078, or 253 per day. The daily rate fell 12.5 percent from one month to the next. The Texas Border Examiner obtained these records through the Deportation Data Project, which publishes ICE administrative arrest data acquired through FOIA. The dataset covers every individual arrest made during this period in the state of Texas. Nearly all arrests- 15,975 of 16,033 were made by officers assigned to one of five Texas-based ICE field offices. The remaining 58 were logged under out-of-state offices. Every arrest in the dataset was carried out by ICE.
Arrests by Field Office
San Antonio led all Texas field offices with 3,980 arrests, 24.8 percent of the state total. Harlingen followed with 3,782 (23.6 percent), then Houston with 3,757 (23.4 percent). Dallas recorded 3,281 (20.5 percent). El Paso was the smallest Texas office with 1,175 (7.3 percent). January to February shift. Four of five offices saw fewer arrests in February. El Paso had the sharpest drop: from 769 to 406. San Antonio fell from 2,432 to 1,548 (down 36 percent). Houston dropped from 2,117 to 1,640 (down 22.5 percent). Harlingen fell from 2,043 to 1,739 (down 15 percent). Dallas was the only office where arrests rose from 1,565 in January to 1,716 in February, an increase of 9.6 percent.
Custodial vs. Non-Custodial Arrests
Arrests split nearly evenly between two categories: custodial (7,856 or 49.0 percent) and non-custodial (7,268 or 45.3 percent). Another 907 arrests (5.7 percent) were made through the 287(g) program. Two records were classified as reprocessed. A custodial arrest means the person was already in the physical custody of another agency, typically a county jail or state prison when ICE took them into immigration custody. A non-custodial arrest means ICE located and arrested the person in the community. A 287(g) arrest is made by a state or local law enforcement officer operating under a formal agreement with ICE. The custodial rate varied sharply by field office. El Paso relied most heavily on custodial arrests at 72.7 percent. Dallas followed at 62.3 percent. Houston was near even at 47.4 percent. San Antonio (39.1 percent) leaned more on community enforcement and 287(g) partnerships, which accounted for 14.3 percent of its arrests. Harlingen (42.4 percent) relied primarily on non-custodial community enforcement; 287(g) made up less than 1 percent of its arrests.
Targeted vs. Collateral Arrests
Of 16,033 arrests, 11,404 (71.1 percent) were targeted, meaning ICE sought the individual specifically. The remaining 4,628 (28.9 percent) were collateral(incidental) El Paso ran the most focused operations: 92.6 percent of its arrests were targeted. Houston (87.8 percent) and Dallas (84.6 percent) were close behind.
Criminal History at the Time of Arrest
Nearly half of everyone arrested (48.0 percent) had no criminal conviction or pending charges in ICE's records. ICE classifies these individuals as "Other Immigration Violator." El Paso had the highest share of convicted criminals at 37.1 percent of its arrests. San Antonio followed at 34.7 percent, Houston at 33.2 percent. Harlingen had the lowest conviction rate at 22.0 percent and the highest share of people classified as Other Immigration Violator: 63.5 percent of all Harlingen arrests. Dallas stood out for a different reason. It was the only field office where pending criminal charges (1,153) outnumbered convicted criminals (931). In every other office, convictions outnumbered pending charges.
Citizenship
People from 106 countries were arrested in Texas during this period. Mexican nationals made up more than half: 8,229 arrests, or 51.3 percent of the total. Honduras was second with 2,145 (13.4 percent), followed by Venezuela with 1,368 (8.5 percent) and Guatemala with 1,319 (8.2 percent). The top four countries combined accounted for 81.5 percent of all arrests. El Salvador (721), Cuba (631), Nicaragua (364), and Colombia (307) rounded out the top eight. Ecuador and India each had fewer than 200 arrests. The remaining 96 countries accounted for 670 arrests combined, or 4.2 percent.
Gender
Males accounted for 13,928 arrests (86.9 percent). Females accounted for 2,099 (13.1 percent). Six records listed the gender as unknown.
Data Notes
Total records: 16,033 individual arrest records. Time period: January 1 - February 28, 2026. The raw data comes from ICE’s administrative arrest records, released to the Deportation Data Project under the Freedom of Information Act A note on pending charges: as described in the criminal history section, this category in the ICE data includes individuals for whom charges were never formally filed or have since lapsed. It is not equivalent to an active criminal case and should not be read that way.
