5% of ICE Detainees Have Violent Convictions, 73% Have No Convictions

ICE is not targeting the "worst of the worst"

President Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he would be “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly claimed that they are arresting the “worst of the worst.” New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leaked to the Cato Institute reveal a different story.

Of people booked into ICE custody this fiscal year (since October 1, 2025):

- Nearly three in four (73%) had no criminal conviction;

- Nearly half had no criminal conviction nor even any pending criminal charges;

- Only 8 percent had a violent or property criminal conviction;

- Only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction;

- A majority of criminal convicts had vice, immigration, or traffic convictions.

The appendix table at the end of this report provides a detailed breakdown of the data by type of crime.

The earliest data I have obtained that was reported in this way comes from April 26, 2025. Compared with the period from October 2024 to April 2025—before the White House shifted its focus completely away from criminals—80% of the increase in daily ICE book-ins has come from individuals without criminal convictions.

Since October 1, only 8 percent of detained persons had either a violent or property crime. Equally as many people were detained with an immigration conviction (e.g., illegal entry/reentry) as violent convicts.

In its posts on this subject, DHS and ICE often label people with pending criminal charges as “criminal arrests,” even though these people have never been found guilty, and these charges are often minor and are regularly dismissed. ICE is denying these people due process by arresting them prior to a conviction. Nonetheless, ICE data show that nearly half (47 percent) of all ICE detainees this fiscal year had no conviction or charge.

Other data sources support the conclusions from the number of ICE book-ins. The Deportation Data Project, run by UC Berkeley Law School in collaboration with UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP), has obtained data on ICE arrests via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). ICE arrests refer to individuals charged as removable by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, excluding those arrested by Border Patrol and referred to ICE for detention, which are included in the data above.

This arrest dataset also does not disclose the type of crime committed. In any case, it similarly shows that by late July, 67 percent of ICE arrests were of people without criminal convictions. It also shows that by late July, nearly 40 percent of ICE arrests were of people without criminal convictions or criminal charges. This marks a significant shift from President Biden’s policies, under which only one in ten arrests involved individuals without any prior criminal conviction or charge.

More important than the share of arrests is the absolute number of these arrests. Already by late July, ICE arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions had increased by 571 percent compared to the weekly average at the start of the calendar year. ICE arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions or criminal charges increased a staggering 1,500 percent since January 1.

Finally, the last data source comes from public data directly from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, showing that by mid-November, 69 percent of current ICE detainees who were arrested by ICE had no criminal conviction, and 40 percent had no criminal charge. The number of people in detention who were convicted of a crime and had no pending charges increased a staggering 2,370 percent since January, from fewer than 1,000 to over 21,000.

The ICE data show that the share of immigrants detained after an ICE arrest who had criminal convictions has fallen in half since January, dropping from 62 percent to 31 percent in November. At the same time, the share of detainees without a criminal conviction or criminal charge has exploded from 6 percent to 40 percent of detainees.

The same ICE dataset shows that in November 2025, 70 percent of people deported by ICE had no criminal conviction, and 43 percent had no criminal conviction or criminal charge. Across all available datasets, it is clear that the Trump administration is not living up to its promises to deport millions and millions of criminals or to prioritize the worst of the worst. So far, the administration has removed barely 90,000 individuals with criminal convictions and fewer than 150,000 individuals with convictions or pending charges.

President Trump’s deportation agenda does not align with the campaign promises he made or the rhetoric of his officials. The president has already recognized that deportations are hurting the US economy and deporting good workers. But even more importantly, it is diverting resources away from targeting true public safety threats, whether from immigrants or Americans. ICE should redirect its resources back toward serious public safety threats.