5% of People Detained by ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions

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

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ICE is primarily detaining people without serious criminal convictions
Cumulative ICE book-ins into custody, FY 2026, October 1–November 15, 2025

Source: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “ICE Initial Book-Ins by Criminality and MSC: FY2025 YTD,” November 15, 2025. See Appendix Table A for classifications.

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 (see graph).

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(see graph).

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 (see graph).

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(see graph).

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.

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70 percent of individuals deported from ICE custody in November 2025 had no criminal convictions
ICE removals from detention, Nov 1-16, 2025

·  Other immigration violator – 43%

·  Pending criminal charges – 27%

·  Convicted criminal – 30%

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Source: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Detention Management,” Nov. 16, 2025 (and archived versions).

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.

David J. Bier is the associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. This article, originally posted to the Cato Institute website, is published courtesy of the Cato Institute.