More Than 90 Percent Of ICE Detainees Have Never Been Convicted Of Violent Crimes

To call the administration’s “worst of the worst” claims a ruse is to give this administration too much credit. It’s not clever enough to run a con. Going after criminals was never the point during Trump’s first term. And mass deportation was the platform Trump ran on to get back to the Oval Office for this term.

Given the expectations, ICE was always going to fall short of arrest quotas if it restricted itself to actual lawbreakers. That’s why it’s casting a wider net, one that not only removes anyone looking vaguely Hispanic, but also people who happen to disagree with Trump or his policies.

And that’s why most of ICE’s high-profile raids have targeted businesses. This administration is creating a labor crisis with its shotgun approach to deportation, something that’s only going to aggravate current financial problems created by the administration’s shotgun approach to perceived trade deficits.

Who are we ejecting from this country at the rate of dozens of people per day? Hardworking, law-abiding migrants who’ve done nothing more than seek jobs, pay taxes, and carve out a better life for their loved ones. The government knows what it’s doing. After all, it already has all the evidence it needs to show its mass deportation program has nothing to do with making this nation safer or more secure.

David Blier has dug into the data for Cato, and here’s the upshot of this mass forced exodus.

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.

The pretense of making America safer has been discarded. America won’t get any safer, just as surely as it won’t get any greater under this president. For years, it’s been known that migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. But with arrest numbers flagging after an initial, more-targeted surge, the administration made it clear it was time to hit the streets and round up any foreigners ICE might come across.

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?” 

ICE did indeed go to Home Depot. And for that, it’s now dealing with multiple weeks of unending protests, with the focal point being the Home Deport raid that occurred in Los Angeles.

It’s nothing more than a racist purge — something that can be ascertained even with incomplete data. As Blier points out, it’s difficult to get a complete picture on deportation efforts, now that the job has been split up between ICE, CBP, and the Border Patrol. But just looking at ICE’s numbers, it’s easy to see this isn’t about ejecting criminals. It’s about getting rid of non-white people.

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.

As that number has exponentially increased, so has the percentage of migrants without criminal convictions, who now make up nearly three-quarters of all ICE detainees. And yet, many of these people will be routed to whatever hellhole might take them, whether it’s being stacked up in repurposed shipping containers in South Sudan or forced into general population at El Salvador’s CECOT.

And we possibly haven’t even seen the worst of this.

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. 

Trump’s anger has been re-lit by incessant protests and an extremely low-energy birthday party. On top of all but declaring war on “Democrat” cities, Trump has ordered ICE to increase its deportations. At some point, the demands will outstrip the supply. That unavoidable fact — along with the administration’s blood lust for cruelty — increases the odds that actual citizens will be treated like disposable foreigners by people too busy to do the job right and too removed from any form of accountability to care.