Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s high-profile late-January surge in Maine accounted for about one-third of all ICE detentions in the state over the past year.

That means beyond those few days in January, there’s a lot more to learn about the agency’s efforts here since President Donald Trump returned to office in early 2025.

Data obtained from the federal government last week offers the most comprehensive information yet. A group of academics and lawyers called the Deportation Data Project collected the federal data through a lawsuit and released it to the public. It reveals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 549 people in Maine from the start of Trump’s term through March 9, when the comprehensive data set ends. 

While the story of each ICE detention is personal, the data is valuable to understanding the Trump administration’s strategies and the scope of the enforcement. The new data includes the dates of each detention, the country of citizenship of those taken into custody and more. It does not include names, or Customs and Border Protection arrests.

The Press Herald could not independently verify the data, but the Deportation Data Project’s release is consistent with our reporting on the ground during and after the January surge. The project’s data is also frequently cited by major news outlets, other researchers and members of Congress.

Here are five major takeaways:

1. Enforcement spiked during four days in January, but was steady throughout the year.

The first ICE detention of Trump’s second term in Maine was Jan. 25, 2025. It was a man from the Democratic Republic of Congo in his late 40s and he remains in the U.S., according to the data.

Other than the agency’s surge operation in January, when extra agents came to the state to target hundreds of people, the next highest single day of arrests was Sept. 9, 2025, when ICE took nine people into custody.

Enforcement didn’t end with the surge. In the subsequent six weeks, 40 people were detained, including nine with criminal convictions. That is fewer than a quarter of the people detained in that time, but it’s a slightly higher portion of people with criminal convictions as compared to all of the arrests in Maine during Trump’s second term.

2. The majority of people detained do not have criminal records

Publicly, ICE regularly emphasizes its focus on detaining people with criminal records, like in a March 24 press release when the agency said, “Nearly 70% of illegal aliens ICE arrested across the country have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges in the U.S. alone.”

But in Maine, fewer than half of the people ICE detained over the past year have known criminal records. In the last year of the Biden administration, 67% of ICE detainees in Maine had criminal records.

Under Trump, the portion with criminal convictions was 18.4%, representing 101 people, meaning 448 people detained had no criminal conviction. During January’s surge operation, just 12 of the 192 people taken into custody had criminal convictions.

ICE did not respond to a request for an interview or comment on our analysis.

The data shows that many of the people detained without criminal records were explicitly targeted by ICE, which aligns with the Press Herald’s on-the-ground reporting. In August 2025, the data began to show which arrests were “targeted” versus “collateral,” where ICE comes into contact with someone in the course of targeting another person or a place. From August to March, 68% percent of detentions are noted as “targeted” — a much higher portion than the people who had criminal records.

This contrasts with frequent messaging from Trump and ICE that the agency is targeting people with criminal records and the “worst of the worst.”

The green segment in the pie chart represents people ICE considers immigration violators, though ICE’s own data shows that at least 187 people the agency marked as “other immigration violators” are still having their cases adjudicated by immigration judges. And, immigration judges have released dozens of people detained during the ICE surge, finding that they shouldn’t be in custody.

3. A number of people have gone straight from jail or prison to immigration custody

Whenever possible, ICE prefers to take people into custody directly from a local jail or prison “in a controlled environment,” decreasing risks to officers and detainees, the agency says on its website. “It prevents the individual from being released back into the community where they may re-offend.”

The ICE data notes 94 of the 549 people it detained in Maine were in custody already. Nearly all of them had pending criminal charges or a conviction.

If somebody is in the local jail and a federal agency has placed a detainer on that person, the agency gets notified when the person is being released, said Capt. Erik Frigon of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. It’s the same process that would happen if the person faced charges in another county in Maine, for example — that jurisdiction would be notified of the person’s release.

Notably, no one ICE detained during the enforcement surge that started Jan. 20 was moved from local or state custody; all were new arrests.

4. Most people haven’t been deported yet. Some chose to leave.

Seventy percent of people detained in Trump’s second term in Maine are still fighting their deportations or have been released back into the U.S., or both. 

Of the 549 people detained, 164 had been deported from the U.S. as of March 9, the end date for the data. They are a mix of people who had criminal charges and convictions and those who didn’t. 

Thirty-three people detained in Maine who had no known criminal record opted for a “voluntary departure.” Nationally, more people are choosing to give up on their cases; the Deportation Data Project reports a 28-fold increase in voluntary departures under the second Trump administration. The project’s researchers and attorneys say that may be because, unlike in the past, people without criminal records aren’t being released on bond, and instead are being held for weeks or months while they await a ruling.

5. Angolans, Ecuadorans, Congolese and Guatemalans were most detained — but few Somalis.

The data on country of citizenship matches very closely with the Press Herald’s previous reporting on people most frequently detained by ICE under Trump’s second term. What is revealed in this new dataset is that, for the country of citizenship most affected (Angolans), the vast majority of people were targeted by ICE (as opposed to being “collateral” arrests), and at the same time, the vast majority also did not have any criminal charges or convictions. 

Of those with no criminal records, like people the Press Herald has spoken with, some are following legal avenues to try to remain in the U.S. long-term, and are working legally while they wait for their applications for asylum to be adjudicated. 

The data on citizenship also shows that of the people detained in Maine in the last year, only seven are citizens of Somalia, and none were taken into ICE custody in 2026 through this reporting period.

That is notable because two U.S. officials told the New York Times in January that its surge operation was intended to target immigrants from Somalia, along with others. Trump used the same justification for his crackdown in Minnesota and has accused Somalis in both states of being responsible for widespread fraud.