By Nathan Brooks

The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now detaining people indiscriminately and releasing almost no one from custody.

The assessment, published by the National Immigration Law Center, describes a detention system that no longer sorts detainees by risk, criminal history or flight risk before deciding who stays locked up.

What does the report say changed?

According to NILC, ICE arrests have widened to sweep in people regardless of their circumstances — a practice the organization calls indiscriminate detention. At the same time, the agency releases almost no one once they are in custody.

That combination, the organization argues, marks a shift from earlier enforcement patterns, when officers exercised discretion at the point of arrest and immigration judges could release detainees on bond or parole.

Who is affected?

The report concerns people arrested by ICE inside the United States:

• Individuals with no criminal record, whom earlier enforcement guidance typically deprioritized
• Long-term residents picked up in workplace, home and community operations
• Asylum seekers and other applicants whose cases remain pending before immigration courts

Under the pattern NILC describes, each of these groups faces the same outcome after arrest: detention with almost no release.

Which steps in the process no longer work as before?

In earlier practice, several checkpoints could end detention before deportation proceedings ran their course. According to the NILC report, those checkpoints now rarely open.

• Arrest-stage discretion. Officers once weighed factors such as family ties, length of residence and lack of criminal history before taking someone into custody. The report says that screening has effectively disappeared.
• Parole and bond. Detainees could previously seek release on parole or bond while their cases proceeded. NILC states that ICE now grants almost no such releases.
• Judicial review. Because the executive branch controls custody decisions at the front end, a collapsed release rate means many detainees never reach a hearing where a judge can weigh their release.

What does this mean in practice?

For detainees and their families, the report describes a system where arrest leads to open-ended custody. People who might once have been released within days or weeks now stay detained while their immigration cases move forward.

The National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., and Oakland, California, published the assessment to document how detention practice has shifted and to inform legal advocates who challenge custody.

Where can readers verify the change?

The report is available through the National Immigration Law Center. ICE publishes its own enforcement and detention statistics, and readers seeking the government's figures should consult official ICE data releases. Anyone facing detention should consult a licensed immigration attorney or an accredited representative rather than rely on news reports alone.

The takeaway in one line: arrest by ICE now leads to detention for nearly everyone, and the doors out of custody, according to NILC, have all but closed.