Key Finding: ADI identified 666 recorded ICE arrests and 100 ICE detainer requests in the Pittsburgh metro area from January through July 2026. The arrest count rose from 61 in January to 192 in July—about three times as many.
These counts include only records that ADI could place within the metro area. They are not complete regional totals. Missing or unclear locations leave gaps in the data and may affect the monthly pattern.
What The Records Show: July had the highest arrest count among the seven months shown. The count rose each month from April through July. Detainer requests ranged from 9 to 19 per month. The chart covers January through July. The table also includes the first six days of August. Across that longer period, ADI identified 672 arrest records that could be placed in the metro area.
Pittsburgh was the most common city name in those records, with 196 arrests. Aliquippa followed with 49, then Beaver Falls with 46. These are the top locations among the records ADI could place. City names may be mailing addresses rather than the exact town where an arrest happened, so the table does not give exact totals within town boundaries.
What is an ICE detainer? ICE stands for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. A detainer is a request ICE sends to a jail or another law enforcement agency that already holds a person. It asks the agency to tell ICE before the person is released and to hold them for up to 48 extra hours so ICE can take them into custody.
A detainer is a request, not an ICE arrest or a deportation. The record does not prove that the jail honored the request or that ICE later arrested the person. The two lines in the chart count separate actions. They do not track the same people from a request to an arrest. Requests that ask only for notice before release are not included in the detainer line. ICE’s explanation of detainers.
Which communities are included? The Pittsburgh metro area includes eight counties: Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Lawrence, Washington, and Westmoreland. The counts describe recorded arrest locations and the jails or other facilities receiving detainer requests. They do not tell us where the people involved live.
What readers should keep in mind. The records come from ICE and were made public by the Deportation Data Project. This brief uses records through August 6, 2026, not the full year. Records marked as duplicates were removed, but one person may still appear in more than one action.
Some locations are missing or unclear. For example, Pennsylvania has a Cranberry Township inside the metro area and another outside it. Records that could not be placed with enough confidence were left out. A town missing from the table should not be read as having no arrests. We cannot tell how many local records are missing or what the full regional totals would be.
Sources: Deportation Data Project’s ICE records, its release coverage notice, and U.S. Census Bureau metro area definitions. Analysis by Allegheny Data Institute.
For a more detailed explanation of the methods used in this brief, contact ADI at info@alleghenydata.org.
Leave a Reply