Someone’s taken into ICE custody in Michigan. Here’s what happens to them next.

A Michigan Advance analysis of ICE data obtained via FOIA found 6,307 people apprehended in the state from January 2025 through early August 2026, held an average of 47 days, with about three-fourths eventually deported or leaving via 'voluntary departure.' Less than 1 percent of those in detention received any relief.

Attorneys describe a system where detention is the default outcome of any encounter, and where transfers between facilities, sometimes hundreds of miles away, disrupt legal representation, family visits, and access to commissary funds. One attorney described a client bounced between Texas and Michigan and back, leaving his case in jurisdictional limbo.

Nearly all deportees are sent to their country of citizenship, but the report highlights a Chaldean man swiftly deported to Iraq after meeting with two members of Congress, where he does not speak Arabic and has no family, and is now reportedly in hiding.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.