Trump's Deportation Drive Detains 71.7% Non-Criminals

President Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to deport “the worst of the worst” immigrants, often highlighting the supposed dangers posed by “dangerous criminals” who have entered the U.S. illegally. He has promised to expel millions of migrants in what he describes as the largest deportation program in American history, aiming to protect law-abiding citizens from the violent threats he claims these immigrants pose.

However, government data on ongoing detentions paints a different picture. There has been a significant increase in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since Trump began his second term, with reports of raids across the country. Yet, the majority of people currently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. Of those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes, contrasting sharply with the chilling narrative Trump uses to support his border security agenda.

Ahilan Arulanantham, co-faculty director of the UCLA Law School’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, noted the disconnect between Trump's rhetoric and the reality on the ground. He stated that the administration consistently claims to be targeting the most dangerous individuals, but the data shows that the majority of those arrested have no criminal history.

The latest ICE statistics reveal that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, with 41,495—71.7%—having no criminal convictions. This includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

Each detainee is assigned a threat level by ICE on a scale of 1 to 3, with one being the highest. Those without a criminal record are classified as having “no ICE threat level.” As of June 23, the latest data available, 84% of people detained at 201 facilities nationwide were not given a threat level. Another 7% had been graded as a level 1 threat, 4% were level 2, and 5% were level 3.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, emphasized that Trump's claims about migrants driving violent crime in the U.S. are unfounded. She stated that there is no research or evidence supporting these claims.

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, disputed the assessment that ICE isn’t targeting immigrants with a criminal record. She asserted that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has directed ICE to focus on the “worst of the worst,” including gang members, murderers, and rapists. She counted detainees with convictions, as well as those with pending charges, as “criminal illegal aliens.”

Nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute shows that as of June 14, 65% of the more than 204,000 people processed into the system by ICE since the start of fiscal year 2025, which began Oct. 1, 2024, had no criminal convictions. Of those with convictions, only 6.9% had committed a violent crime, while 53% had committed nonviolent crimes that fell into three main categories — immigration, traffic, or vice crimes.

Total ICE arrests shot up at the end of May after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave the agency a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term. ICE arrested nearly 30% more people in May than in April, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, or TRAC. That number rose again in June, by another 28%.

The Cato Institute found that between Feb. 8 and May 17, the daily average of “noncriminals” processed into the system ranged from 421 to 454. In the following two weeks at the end of May, that number rose to 678 and then rose to 927 in the period from June 1 through 14.

Eisen noted that the increase in funding for detaining and removing people has not resulted in a focus on dangerous criminals. She emphasized that the majority of those being targeted are not dangerous individuals.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, stated that the administration is intensely focused on rooting out unvetted criminals who are in the country illegally. She highlighted a recent operation that rescued children from labor exploitation at a marijuana facility in California and continued arrests of high-level offenders, including murderers, pedophiles, gang members, and rapists. She dismissed any suggestion that the administration is not focused on these dangerous criminals as flat out wrong.

While most ICE detainees are not convicted criminals, there are detainees who have committed serious crimes. The administration released information on five high-level offenders who had been arrested. During his campaign, Trump highlighted several cases where immigrants in the country illegally were arrested for horrific crimes. Among them was the killing of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was slain last year by a Venezuelan man in the U.S. illegally. Jose Ibarra was found guilty of murder and other crimes in Riley’s February 2024 killing and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ibarra is seeking a new trial.

Trump in January signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes.

Research has consistently found that immigrants are not driving violent crime in the U.S. and that they actually commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. A 2023 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that immigrants for 150 years have had lower incarceration rates than those born in the U.S. In fact, the rates have declined since 1960 — according to the paper, immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated.

Experts say the false rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration creates real harm. Arulanantham noted that it makes people in immigrant communities feel targeted and marginalized, creating more political and social space for hate in all its forms, including hate crime against immigrant communities. Eisen emphasized that all Americans should want safe and thriving communities and that the president's misleading statements about the truth and distorting reality are not the way to deliver public safety.