New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. Also, among those with criminal convictions, they are overwhelmingly not the violent offenses that ICE continuously uses to justify its deportation agenda. ICE has shared this data with people outside the agency, who shared the numbers with the Cato Institute.
As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.
Using public data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—which does not include details of criminal convictions—we can see the trend in ICE book-ins from the start of the Trump administration. During the first two weeks of June, ICE brought into its custody nearly 927 non-criminals. That represents a roughly threefold increase compared to the rate of non-criminals booked in during the first week of this administration.
This shift in policy resulted from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s meeting at the end of May, when he ordered ICE to start arresting more non-criminals. “What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” he said. “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7‑Eleven?” Since then, ICE and Border Patrol have shifted to roaming US streets and workplaces to round up immigrants, regardless of the public threat they may pose.
This understates the change in interior enforcement against non-criminals. This is mainly because ICE also books some people into custody who were originally detained by Border Patrol. Hence, the pre-Trump numbers include many non-criminals who had never lived in the United States before. Since then, the Trump administration has put Border Patrol in charge of mass deportation in California, and it is making interior arrests all along both the Mexican and Canadian borders. This means that the pre-Trump and post-Trump numbers are not directly comparable. We cannot say for certain how many peaceful individuals are being whisked off America’s streets by government agents.
That said, when examining total ICE book-ins of individuals arrested by ICE, we can see a more extreme increase in interior enforcement. Since the beginning of this year, ICE book-ins based on ICE arrests have increased nearly sixfold, from a daily average of 215 to over 1,100 per day.
ICE also books individuals who have pending criminal charges into custody. As of June 14, the agency had booked 44,897 individuals with only a pending charge. The agency sometimes erroneously calls these people “criminals,” even without a conviction. This is wrong. We believe in due process in America because many people charged are never ultimately convicted.
ICE admitted in court that it considers even people whose charges were dismissed to still be a “criminal” for purposes of removal, and many immigrants with pending charges are never convicted. For instance, ICE terminated the legal status of international student Suguru Onda for a dismissed fishing-related citation. The same thing happened to Akshar Patel, another international student, with a dismissed reckless driving charge. When ICE deports people without giving them their day in court, it not only deprives them of their right to clear their name but also denies justice to victims if they are guilty.
Regardless, ICE also hasn’t listed what the charges are for, and we know that it is slapping thousands of “illegal entry” charges on long-time residents to brand them as criminals and force California and other states to help deport them.
Nonetheless, focusing on people without pending charges or convictions, the difference in policy is indescribable. ICE doesn’t separately report the criminal status of book-in specifically from ICE arrests. But ICE’s public numbers on its currently detained population reveal a ninefold increase in immigrants being arrested by ICE and locked up by ICE for no other reason than their immigration status.
If we look at the net increase in immigrants detained by ICE after an ICE arrest, 70 percent of the increase in detention has come from people without criminal convictions.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the public numbers is that in early January, ICE was arresting about 32 immigrants per day in the interior who had no criminal conviction or pending charge. By early June, these arrests were approximately 453 per day—a 14-fold increase. That is about 50 percent more than the daily average for ICE arrests of immigrants of all types in FY 2024.
This was the predictable result of President Trump’s executive order rescinding ICE guidance, which required ICE to focus on public safety threats. As a consequence, the overall capacity of ICE to make arrests has grown thanks to shifting many resources from the military and other law enforcement agencies into ICE. It is also borrowing from end-of-the-year appropriations to pay for operations today, leaving it $1 billion in the hole. ICE is also detaining more people than ever in squalid, inhumane conditions that are worse than those permitted in prisons where serious violent offenders are serving their sentences.
The White House has ordered ICE to meet an unreasonable quota of 3,000 arrests per day, a target they were nowhere near achieving as of June 14. Agents are complaining about how the quota is undermining public safety in interviews with conservative outlets like the New York Post and Washington Examiner. The White House is focused on “quantity over quality,” one agent told the New York Post. The agents told the Post that ICE’s quota was forcing them to leave “some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets.” ICE shifted away from fugitive operations to focus on asylum seekers at courthouses, immigrants who regularly check in with ICE, and other non-threats.
ICE’s deportation agenda is not what is being advertised to the American public. ICE is not interested in prioritizing public safety, yet it constantly pretends that anyone who objects to its tactics and priorities is defending violent criminals. But violent criminals are not ICE’s primary focus. Indeed, it now has no focus altogether. That’s the essence of mass deportation: it is indiscriminate, unfocused, and chaotic. Congress should mandate more transparent reporting from ICE and require that it target only those who pose genuine threats to public safety.
