Detained Vs Arrest

They both involve being held for questioning by law enforcement. Generally arrests impose more restrictions on your freedoms than detentions.
 
I don't know of a hard diving line between an arrest and being detained, but if it's an arrest you almost always will be told that you are under arrest, and be taken to police station or jail. Typically in the US you would also be read your Miranda rights "You have the right to remain silent..." and be handcuffed.

Whereas for being detained, it is usually done right where they found you, or in an area close to where they found you. E.g. police show up at a house responding to a report of domestic violence, and they hold one guy in the back of the police car right outside the house while they talk to the resident and neighbors, and then after talking to everybody they release him from the car back into the house. That's detained, not arrested.

But that is not a hard and fast rule, as sometimes they bring somebody into the police station for questioning because they're a witness or "person of interest", or to have them stand in a police lineup, etc. and it's not an arrest even though they're brought into the station.

Generally, if you're arrested, you usually will know it was an arrest. But if you don't know, to find out for sure you have to go to the authorities for the relevant documentation. The police report will say if it was an arrest.
 
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Also, another sure sign of an arrest is that police fingerprint you at the station whereas being detained usually only involves questioning.
Either way, you'll need to disclose both arrests and detentions so any questions regarding the difference becomes a moot point for naturalization purposes.
 
I don't know of a hard diving line between an arrest and being detained, but if it's an arrest you almost always will be told that you are under arrest, and be taken to police station or jail. Typically in the US you would also be read your Miranda rights "You have the right to remain silent..." and be handcuffed.

I think the bright line distinction is indeed that if you are arrested (at least in the U.S.), you are always supposed to be told that "you are under arrest". What exactly is meant by being "detained" is rather less clear. I remember reading some thread here a while ago where it was argued that, for example, a traffic stop (whether or not one gets a ticket) technically qualifies as being "detained", although I don't think USCIS really expects us to list traffic stops at the N-400 form...
 
I think the bright line distinction is indeed that if you are arrested (at least in the U.S.), you are always supposed to be told that "you are under arrest".
They are supposed to say that, but sometimes the officer forgets to say that, and I don't think their forgetting to say those words automatically turns it into not an arrest. So that by itself isn't a foolproof of way of distinguishing an arrest vs. detention.

But probably at least 95% of the time, all the usual things happen ... "You are under arrest", "you have the right to remain silent", handcuffed, taken to the station or jail, fingerprinted. If all those things happen, or even 4 out of those 5 things, it is definitely an arrest. If two or more don't happen, then maybe/maybe not and you might have to check the police report to know for sure. If none of those things happened, it's not an arrest.
 
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