More than 70 percent of U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) arrests in Nevada in 2025 happened in detention facilities, such as county jails, federal facilities and state prisons, rather than through raids or other activities ICE initiates in the community, according to a new analysis from the left-leaning think tank the Prison Policy Initiative.

The think tank found that of the 2,376 known arrests by ICE between Jan. 20 and Oct. 15, 1,732 people were arrested in detention facilities. In comparison, 554 of those arrests happened in the community, such as in workplaces, courts or homes, the Prison Policy Initiative analysis found. 

The data, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and processed by the Deportation Data Project at University of California Berkeley, provides further insight into the mechanics of immigration enforcement in Nevada and shows how significant state and local cooperation is to ICE’s overall work. It comes against the backdrop of a long-running debate in the Legislature about whether it's appropriate to use state and local resources for immigration enforcement, or whether that should be entirely a federal responsibility. 

The most recent ICE data also no longer distinguishes between arrests through the local, state and federal levels for noncitizens who are incarcerated, making it harder to pinpoint where transfer of inmates is happening. 

ICE, which has dramatically increased arrests during the Trump administration but still fallen short of lofty targets in the region that includes Nevada, did not immediately respond to comment on whether it plans to boost enforcement outside of jails. 

The Prison Policy Initiative found that local jails are an “essential part” of ICE’s detention network in Nevada. Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the group, told The Indy that it can be logistically easier for ICE to arrest people in jails than to go out into the community, which requires more manpower and resources. Local and state jails, meanwhile, often have policies to proactively inform ICE about detained noncitizens. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) have such policies in place. 

“What's going on in jails is really significant, because it … is largely making the difference between states that have low counts of ICE arrests and states that have high counts,” Bertram said in an interview, pointing to states such as Florida that actively encourage using jail space to detain immigrants. 

She contrasts Florida, where more than 23,400 arrests happened in 2025, against Illinois, which is about half the size of Florida but had about 4,000 known arrests, with state laws restricting police collaboration with ICE. Of the known arrests in Florida, about 15,000 happened in jails. 

ICE collaborations with local police and corrections agencies have soared in the past year as President Donald Trump has encouraged such partnerships. In June, the Las Vegas police reentered a controversial partnership with ICE, known as 287(g), that allows Metro officers to hold undocumented people in custody for an additional two days so ICE can pick them up. Several other counties, including Douglas and Lyon, have also entered such agreements. 

The Laken Riley Act, passed in January 2025 by Congress, also mandates the detention of certain noncitizens charged or arrested with crimes, such as shoplifting or burglary. Early last year, Metro adopted a policy to expand the list of charges against migrants that must be reported to ICE after the Laken Riley Act’s passage. 

Reporting from the Las Vegas Sun found that federal immigration agents picked up more than 600 people from Las Vegas police custody from February through September. 

Enforcement in state prisons

An underexamined part of ICE’s detention apparatus in Nevada are the agency’s efforts to pick up people from NDOC facilities. 

NDOC has had a long-standing agreement with ICE to inform the agency about noncitizens and people with immigration violations in the state prison system, holding them in medium or higher-security facilities. Data provided to The Indy via a public records request showed that from 2020 to 2025, the department held an average of about 700 people per year on behalf of ICE. As of October 2025, 164 people in the NDOC system have been released into ICE custody this year.

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has touted the department’s role in immigration enforcement, highlighting them in an immigration policy timeline shared with the Department of Justice this summer. Before Trump took office, ICE would pick up fewer than 20 percent of NDOC-released offenders, according to Lombardo’s timeline. Now, the department releases 100 percent of inmates with ICE holds to federal authorities. 

The number of people with immigration holds in NDOC is notable, representing nearly 7 percent of the state's prison population. That's in line with the percentage of the general Nevada population that is believed to be undocumented.

NDOC primarily houses individuals with felony convictions, including violent offenders. 

But unlike some other state and local correctional systems, NDOC does not hold people for additional time on ICE’s behalf, according to NDOC spokesperson Teri Vance. Rather, the system will notify ICE about a person’s pending release. The lower amount of releases to ICE in comparison to active holds is because a person is still finishing serving time for a crime, she said.  

There will be occasions, such as a holiday, when a person is held at a county jail until ICE can take custody because people cannot be held by the NDOC past their discharge dates, Vance told The Indy.