As protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mass deportation campaign continue, the Trump administration is increasingly defending its tactics by accusing its critics of supporting serious violent criminals. But new nonpublic data — which ICE shared with people outside the agency, and which was later shared with the Cato Institute — shows that ICE has primarily detained people with no criminal convictions of any kind, let alone any serious offenses. (ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment. NBC News has not independently verified this data.)
Here’s a typical exchange from ICE’s defenders: After Kim Kardashian said she opposed “innocent, hardworking people being ripped from their families,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin shared mug shots of various immigrants in a post on X and asked her: “Which one of these convicted child molesters, murderers, drug traffickers and rapists would you like to stay in the county?”
ICE has primarily detained people with no criminal convictions of any kind, let alone any serious offenses.
But the data obtained by the Cato Institute shows that serious criminal convicts are a small minority of the people taken into custody by ICE. About two-thirds of the immigrants booked into ICE detention facilities this fiscal year had not been convicted of anything. Violent offenders like murderers, rapists and child molesters were less than 7% of ICE book-ins.
Assistant Secretary McLaughlin insists the focus is on the “worst of the worst” criminal aliens “to protect American citizens from criminal illegal aliens.” Yet most of the people ICE has brought into its custody had no victims at all. Only 11% of all ICE book-ins in fiscal year 2025 had been convicted of either violent or property crimes.
Many offenses were for victimless crimes that resulted solely from the government’s refusal to let them immigrate and live here legally. The most common convictions for “criminal aliens” detained by ICE were immigration offenses like improper entry and traffic infractions like not having driver’s licenses.
If the government granted these immigrants legal status — which, as Ms. Kardashian’s comment suggests, would be the humane approach to fix the problem — these crimes would never have happened. They are hardly the serious public safety threats Assistant Secretary McLaughlin’s response points to.
The numbers include people arrested by ICE or the Border Patrol — if the Border Patrol turned them over to ICE for detention. But the Border Patrol is arresting thousands of people in the interior of the United States and is reportedly in charge of the deportation efforts in California, and it is making interior arrests as far away as Maine.
This is not unexpected. On Day 1 of his second administration, President Donald Trump immediately rescinded DHS’ prior policy of targeting new border crossers and public safety threats for arrest, requiring it to attempt to arrest “all” undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal histories. The White House has also imposed arrest quotas (LINK ADDED), so ICE cannot put its full attention on finding criminal fugitives.
At the same time, the new data also indicates a recent escalation in noncriminal arrests in the last month. Since mid-May, the number of noncriminals without criminal convictions entering ICE’s custody has more than doubled — from 448 per day to 927 per day in the first two weeks of June. The escalation against noncriminals is the result of orders from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, according to three current and former federal immigration officials who spoke with the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner. “What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” Miller reportedly said. “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7‑Eleven?” In other words, not only is ICE not focused on public safety threats. It’s actively ignoring them to go after people in Home Depot parking lots. The New York Post, citing ICE insiders, reported last week that ICE officers are saying their orders are now “quantity over quality.” They say the policy is forcing them “to leave some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets.” The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign is not about public safety. It is not even about people who violated immigration law without being convicted of a crime. The administration is eagerly canceling the legal status of hundreds of thousands of lawful immigrants so it can deport them, too. It has even deported dozens of legal immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process. If Trump officials were honest, they would just say: “We don’t want these people in the country because we just don’t like them.” Instead, they mislead the public by portraying their arrests as enhancing public safety, targeting serious criminals in the country illegally. The administration is jeopardizing public safety for the niche goal of reducing the U.S. population — for no specific reason at all.
David J. Bier
David J. Bier is the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. 
