Only a fraction of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the past year had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to new data from the Department of Homeland Security.
Yet Trump administration officials continue to justify the aggressive actions of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol as necessary to capture and deport “those convicted for despicable crimes including murder, sexual assault of a minor and rape.”
Tricia McLaughlin
On Monday, Feb. 9, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said: “While ICE law enforcement was being demonized at the Super Bowl, the heroic men and women of ICE continued risking their lives to arrest criminal illegal alien murderers, pedophiles, and rapists from our communities.”
McLaughlin is the same administration spokesperson who said after the murder of Renée Good: “Dangerous criminals — whether they be illegal aliens or U.S. citizens — are turning their vehicles into weapons to attack ICE.”
After the murder of Alex Pretti by federal agents, McLaughlin falsely told news outlets Pretti “violently resisted” immigration officers and appeared to be “an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Her latest claims — which are mainstays of Republican talking points — are debunked by her own department’s internal reports, as noted by CBS News and other major outlets.
On Monday, McLaughlin falsely claimed “70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”
Data from DHS show instead that less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in the past year had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses. (The data in the DHS document do not include arrests by Border Patrol agents.)
The administration’s own data show nearly 60% of those arrested by ICE over the past year had criminal charges or convictions but the majority of the charges were not for violent crimes. In fact, less than 2% of those arrested had homicide or sexual assault charges or convictions. Another 2% of those taken into ICE custody were accused of being gang members.
Further, nearly 40% of all those arrested by ICE in Trump’s first year back in office did not have any criminal records at all. Being in the country illegally is a civil offense, not a criminal offense.
And despite Trump’s continued talk about immigrant gang members infiltrating the country, only 2% of ICE arrests in the past year involved people with alleged gang affiliations.
Meanwhile, the American Immigration Council reports:
- The number of people held in ICE detention on any given day increased by more than 75% in one year.
- By the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more facilities for immigration detention than at the start of the year, a 91% increase.
- The Trump administration has dramatically changed the profile of who is being arrested by increasing the use of “at-large” arrests in American communities by 600%, leading to an unprecedented deployment of federal law enforcement.
- With the funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE has enough funding to operate upward of 135,000 detention beds through the end of FY 2029.
- These changes in arrest practices have led to a 2,450% increase in the number of people with no criminal record being held in ICE detention on any given day.
- President Trump’s executive order calling for the maximum use of detention has created a “no release” system where increasingly few individuals are able to seek release on bond. By the end of November 2025, discretionary releases from detention fell by 87%.
- With release on bond no longer an option for many people seeking relief, and deleterious conditions inside facilities, immigrants are increasingly giving up. As of November 2025, 14.3 people were deported directly from detention for every one person released from ICE detention pending a hearing.