How immigration detainees are moved around Minnesota and the nation

Thousands of immigrants in Minnesota have been sent through the Trump administration’s growing detention and deportation machine in the last year.

Nationwide, Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded nearly 220,000 arrests from Jan. 20 through Oct. 15. Those arrests led to more than 630,000 jail bookings as people were processed into detention facilities multiple times and moved between jails. There were nearly half a million transfers between facilities.

ICE claims, without providing evidence, to have detained 10,000 immigrants living in Minnesota illegally since President Donald Trump returned to office.

The federal government argues that anyone entering the U.S. without permission is subject to mandatory confinement.

Because county jails in Minnesota with ICE contracts are near capacity, ICE is sending immigrants to other states.

ICE detained more than 250,000 people nationwide through mid-October, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune analysis of detention data. We mapped individuals’ paths from their first lockup to their last recorded detention location.

In addition to the overall volume of movement across the nation, the map also shows where detainees ended up before deportation.

Some immigrants have been detained for days after federal judges order their release.

“There’s open hostility towards immigrants and the legal process.” said Julia Decker, policy director for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

“Just getting a client to sign a document becomes almost impossible. It’s a challenge to get them on the phone. Suddenly, they’re in Texas and there’s no way to contact them.”

In 2025, more than 2,700 immigrants passed through Minnesota detention facilities. They were transferred nearly 8,000 times.

That’s what happened to Jairo Pitalasig, an 18-year-old Minneapolis North High School student. Federal agents detained him Jan. 13 at a jobsite in Shakopee. His father, Jose Ernesto Pitalasig Cuzco, also works in construction, and was detained a week earlier.

Detainee flights from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport have also increased dramatically over the past year.

Last winter, there was roughly one flight every week, but that has grown to as many as three per day this year, said Nick Benson, an activist and professional airplane tracker from Burnsville. Benson estimates more than 2,000 immigrants have been flown out of MSP in 2026.

“It’s a pretty stark escalation,” Benson said.

While federal judges have regularly ordered the release of immigrants in detention, there is also an effort to prevent immigrants from being sent to other states.

Irina Vaynerman, CEO of Groundwork Legal, filed emergency motions in federal court on Jan. 21 to stop the pattern.

Detention data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement was obtained by the Deportation Data Project through Freedom of Information Act requests. It includes records of every detainee and detention stay through Oct. 15, 2025.

To analyze detentions, we used anonymized individual identifiers to track people’s detention records and excluded entries missing identification fields. Facility location data comes from the Vera Institute of Justice.