David J. Bier
President Donald Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he will 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 percent) 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 the detailed breakdown of the data by detailed type of crime.
The earliest data I obtained that was reported in this way comes from April 26, 2025. Compared with October 2024 to April 2025—before the White House shifted focus completely away from criminals—80 percent of the increase in daily ICE book-ins have come from individuals without criminal convictions.
Since October 1, only 8 percent of detained persons had either a violent or property crime. 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 include people with pending criminal charges as “criminal arrests,” even though these people have never been found guilty, and the charges are often minor and regularly dismissed. ICE is depriving these people of 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
Other data sources support the conclusions from the number of ICE book-ins. The Deportation Data Project, which is run by UC Berkeley Law School in collaboration with the UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, has obtained data on ICE arrests via the Freedom of Information Act. ICE arrests are individuals charged as removable by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so it excludes people arrested by Border Patrol and referred to ICE for detention who 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 is a dramatic change from President Joseph Biden’s policies under which only one in 10 arrests were individuals without any 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 from the weekly average to start 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 from 62 percent of detainees 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 those who ICE deported 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 worse. 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 match the campaign promises that he made nor the rhetoric from his officials. The president has already recognized that deportations are hurting the US economy in deporting good workers. But perhaps more importantly, the agenda is taking resources away from targeting true public safety threats, whether from immigrants or Americans. ICE should redirect its resources back toward serious public safety threats.
ICE Custody Data as of 2025-11-15