U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and detainments have surged in the Northwest this year.
As OPB reported, the agency’s arrests spiked to nearly record highs in the region covering Oregon and Washington, according to data released under the Freedom of Information Act.
In Portland and its surrounding areas, immigration arrests jumped 600% in the last three months of 2025.
When people are detained by ICE, they’re increasingly being transferred quickly and often between facilities. Some are put on as many as six flights and flown thousands of miles around the country as they shuffle between detention facilities.
Family members of those detained and immigration attorneys say those transfers can cause detainees to miss court dates, impact their ability to connect with lawyers, and even affect their health.
The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to OPB’s requests for comment on its transfer policies, surges in arrest operations or any recent releases of data.
To understand the full scope of the transfer issue, OPB mapped the past two years of transfers and deportations for people detained in ICE’s Seattle Area of Responsibility, which includes Oregon and Washington. You can explore the data in an interactive map above.
See further coverage:
- Under Trump, Northwest immigration detainees are traveling farther from families, legal help
- After Trump called Portland ‘war-ravaged,’ ICE apprehensions near the city spiked 600%
Data for the map comes from the Deportation Data Project, a central repository of U.S. government immigration enforcement data. Its data comes directly from the federal government via the Freedom of Information Act. OPB filtered the data for only detentions in the Seattle Area of Responsibility and analyzed the data to create a flight transfer and/or deportation path for each individual.
The analysis was conducted by OPB’s Troy Brynelson and the visualization was created by OPB’s Keegan Good. OPB’s Tony Schick contributed to the analysis and visualization.
