ICE detainer filings in Texas county jails climbed 12.4 percent this spring

Texas county jails recorded 6,830 new ICE detainers from March through May 2026, up 12.4 percent from the 6,077 logged over the prior three months, according to the Immigration Detainer Report published by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and current through May. A detainer is a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that a jail hold a person for federal pickup, and filing one does not mean the person was deported or transferred.

Each of the spring months drew more detainer filings than any month from November through February, with March the busiest since the commission began publishing monthly totals in November 2025. County jails released or transferred more detainer inmates than they booked over the quarter, and the number still held under a detainer at month's end fell for three straight months to the lowest point in the seven-month series.

Dallas County recorded the biggest increase in raw numbers, up 21.1 percent, as Attorney General Ken Paxton investigated the Dallas County sheriff over the office's refusal to seek a formal ICE cooperation agreement. Travis County, where KUT reported rising jail pickups last fall, rose 19.8 percent, and McLennan County around Waco more than doubled. Harris and Tarrant counties, which run two of the largest jails in the state, both declined. On the border, Webb County around Laredo climbed 39.0 percent while Hidalgo County, the busiest border jail for detainers, held nearly flat. The four border counties that carry almost all border detainer volume added 96 of the 753 additional filings statewide, so most of the quarter's growth came from interior counties rather than the border.

The number of people passing through county jails with a detainer peaked at 8,217 in August 2025 and eased to 7,275 by May, still far above the 2,439 counted in January 2022, the earliest month the data covers. Housing those inmates cost counties $15.4 million in May, a total that tracks jail populations and billing rates rather than detainer filings. The figures come from monthly self-reports that each county jail files with the commission, which may revise them without notice and does not guarantee their accuracy. The counts here cover the state's 254 counties and exclude three Operation Lone Star state facilities that stopped reporting after November 2025, so the totals run below commission figures that include those facilities. The commission has published the placement and release columns only since November 2025, which leaves seven months of flow data and no way yet to separate a seasonal pattern from a trend. The report also excludes people held in federal, CBP or ICE custody, which undercounts detention in deep-border counties such as Val Verde, Kinney and Maverick, where federal facilities rather than county jails hold most detainees.