Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: “Very timely month-by-month data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that the immigration “detainers” issued by the agency are declining, according to information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. The detainers are notices issued by ICE and other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies which ask local, state and federal law enforcement agencies not to release suspected non-citizens held at their facilities in order to give ICE an opportunity to take them into its custody. Detainers, often called “immigration holds,” are a primary tool that ICE uses to apprehend the suspects it is seeking. The ICE data covering the first four months of fiscal year 2013 indicate that the agency issued an average of 18,427 detainers each month in this recent period. This is down 19 percent from the average monthly number of 22,832 during FY 2012. For the entire twelve months of FY 2012, the agency issued 273,982 detainers. The first part in a three part series analyzing these case-by-case ICE detainer records is now available here.”