Trump says he wants to deport ‘the worst of the worst.' Government data tells another story
But government data around ongoing detentions tells a different story.
There has been an increase of arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since Trump began his second term, with reports of raids across the country. Yet the majority of people currently detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. Of those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes — a stark contrast to the chilling nightmare Trump describes to support his border security agenda.
'There's a deep disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality,' said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-faculty director of the UCLA Law School's Center for Immigration Law and Policy. 'This administration, and also in the prior Trump administration, they consistently claim to be going after the worst of the worst and just talk about immigration enforcement as though it is all about going after violent, dangerous people with extensive criminal histories. And yet overwhelmingly, it's people they're targeting for arrest who have no criminal history of any kind.'
A look at the numbers
The latest ICE statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7% — of whom had no criminal convictions. That includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement, but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
Each detainee is assigned a threat level by ICE on a scale of 1 to 3, with one being the highest. Those without a criminal record are classified as having 'no ICE threat level.' As of June 23, the latest data available, 84% of people detained at 201 facilities nationwide were not given a threat level. Another 7% had been graded as a level 1 threat, 4% were level 2 and 5% were level 3.
'President Trump has justified this immigration agenda in part by making false claims that migrants are driving violent crime in the United States, and that's just simply not true,' said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. 'There's no research and evidence that supports his claims.'
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, called the assessment that ICE isn't targeting immigrants with a criminal record 'false' and said that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has directed ICE 'to target the worst of the worst—including gang members, murderers, and rapists.' She counted detainees with convictions, as well as those with pending charges, as 'criminal illegal aliens.'
Nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute shows that as of June 14, 65% of the more than 204,000 people processed into the system by ICE since the start of fiscal year 2025, which began Oct. 1, 2024, had no criminal convictions. Of those with convictions, only 6.9% had committed a violent crime, while 53% had committed nonviolent crimes that fell into three main categories — immigration, traffic, or vice crimes.
Total ICE arrests shot up at the end of May after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave the agency a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump's second term. ICE arrested nearly 30% more people in May than in April, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, or TRAC. That number rose again in June, by another 28%.
The Cato Institute found that between Feb. 8 and May 17, the daily average of 'noncriminals' processed into the system ranged from 421 to 454. In the following two weeks at the end of May, that number rose to 678 and then rose to 927 in the period from June 1 through 14.
'What you're seeing is this huge increase in funding to detain people, remove people, enforce immigration laws,' Eisen said. 'And what we're seeing is that a lot of these people back to sort of the original question you asked, these are not people who are dangerous.'
Administration says focus is on dangerous criminals
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said the administration is intensely focused on rooting out unvetted criminals who are in the country illegally.
'Just this week, the Administration conducted a successful operation rescuing children from labor exploitation at a marijuana facility in California, and continued arresting the worst of the worst – including murderers, pedophiles, gang members, and rapists,' she wrote in an email. 'Any suggestion that the Administration is not laser focused on these dangerous criminals is flat out wrong.'
While most ICE detainees are not convicted criminals, there are detainees who have committed serious crimes. On Friday, the administration released information on five high-level offenders who had been arrested.
During his campaign, Trump highlighted several cases where immigrants in the country illegally were arrested for horrific crimes. Among them: The killing of 22-year-old Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was slain last year by a Venezuelan man in the U.S. illegally. Jose Ibarra was found guilty of murder and other crimes in Riley's February 2024 killing and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ibarra is seeking a new trial.
Trump in January signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes.
Immigrants are not driving violent crime in US, studies find
Research has consistently found, however, that immigrants are not driving violent crime in the U.S. and that they actually commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. A 2023 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, reported that immigrants for 150 years have had lower incarceration rates than those born in the U.S. In fact, the rates have declined since 1960 — according to the paper, immigrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated.
Experts say the false rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration creates real harm.
'It makes people in immigrant communities feel targeted and marginalized,' Arulanantham said. 'It creates more political and social space for hate in all its forms, including hate crime against immigrant communities.'
Eisen noted that the impact extends to other communities as well.
'All Americans should want safe and thriving communities and this idea that the president of the United States is making misleading statements about the truth and distorting reality is not the way to deliver public safety,' she said.
___
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
33 minutes ago
- Fox News
Florida man convicted of killing 2 people outside a bar set to be put to death
A Florida man who was convicted in the 1993 shooting deaths of a man and woman outside a bar as part of an attempted revenge killing is set to be executed on Tuesday. Michael Bernard Bell, 54, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near the city of Starke, unless he is granted a last-day reprieve. Bell was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death in the killings of Jimmy West and Tamecka Smith. In December 1993, Bell spotted what he suspected was the car of the man who had killed his brother earlier that year, according to court records. Bell appeared to be unaware that the man had sold the car to West. Bell called two friends and armed himself with an AK-47 before locating the car parked outside a liquor lounge and waiting for the vehicle owner to come outside. When West, Smith and another woman eventually exited the club, Bell approached the car and fired his gun, according to officials. West died at the scene and Smith succumbed to her injuries on the way to the hospital. The other woman was not injured. Witnesses reported that Bell also fired at a crowd of onlookers before fleeing the scene. Bell was arrested the following year. He was also later convicted of three additional murders that happened prior to the shooting at the bar. He fatally shot a woman and her toddler in 1989, and he killed his mother's boyfriend about four months before shooting West and Smith, officials said. Attorneys for Bell have filed appeals with the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. In their state filing, the attorneys argued that Bell's execution should be blocked because of newly discovered evidence concerning witness testimony. But justices unanimously rejected the argument last week, citing what they described as overwhelming evidence of Bell's guilt. Bell's attorneys filed a similar petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, although the nation's highest court has not yet issued a ruling as his execution time nears. Bell would be the eighth person executed in Florida this year, and a ninth is scheduled for later this month. The state put six people to death in 2023, but only one execution happened last year. Across the U.S., 25 men have been executed so far this year, matching last year's total. Florida has executed more people this year than any other state, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second place with four each. The states that follow are Alabama with three executions and Oklahoma with two, while Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee each have put one person to death.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Supreme Court lets Trump fire hundreds of Education Department workers and dismantle the agency
WASHINGTON − An ideologically divided Supreme Court on July 14 allowed the Trump administration to fire hundreds of workers from the Education Department and continue other efforts to dismantle the agency. The court's three liberal justices opposed the order, the latest win for President Donald Trump at the high court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority handed Trump the power to repeal laws passed by Congress 'by firing all those necessary to carry them out.' 'The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve,' Sotomayor wrote in her 19-page dissent, 'but either way the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is great.' The majority did not explain its decision in the brief, unsigned order. The decision came a week after the court allowed the administration to move forward with large-scale staffing cuts at multiple agencies. Trump is trying to fulfill his campaign promise to end the Education Department and move school policy to the states. 'Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. She said the administration will continue to perform education-related functions required by law while "empowering families and teachers by reducing education bureaucracy." The Education Department workers were placed on administrative leave in March and were to stop receiving salaries on June 9 before a judge intervened at the request of Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers' unions. The government has been spending more than $7 million a month to continue paying the employees who remain unable to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Massachusetts said the White House's decision to fire more than 1,300 workers has prevented the federal government from effectively implementing legally required programs and services. Such changes can't be made without the approval of Congress, which created the department in 1979, Joun ruled in May. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed that decision. The court said the administration provided no evidence to counter Joun's "record-based findings about the disabling impact" of the mass firings and the transfer of some functions to other agencies. The Justice Department said the Constitution gives the executive branch, not the courts, the authority to decide how many employees are needed. "The Department of Education has determined that it can carry out its statutorily mandated functions with a pared-down staff and that many discretionary functions are better left to the States," Solicitor General John Sauer told the Supreme Court. An executive order Trump signed in March directed McMahon to "facilitate the closure of the Department of Education." Republicans have long accused the federal government of holding too much power over local and state education policy, even though the federal government has no control over school curriculum. McMahon announced roughly half the agency's workforce would be eliminated through a combination of mass layoffs and voluntary buyouts. That would have reduced the staff from 4,133 workers when Trump began his second term in January to 2,183 workers. The administration also wants the Small Business Administration to take over student loans and move special education services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Joun's May 22 order blocked the administration from transferring those functions and required the department to reinstate fired workers. The appeals court said Trump doesn't have to employ as many Education Department workers as the previous administration but can't cut so many that the agency can't function as Congress intended. States challenging the moves said the administration removed nearly all the workers who certify whether colleges and universities qualify for federal student aid programs. And it gutted the department in charge of the data used to allocate billions of dollars to states, lawyers for New York and other states told the Supreme Court. Unless the firings are reversed while the courts are deciding if the administration is acting legally, "it will be effectively impossible to undo much of the damage caused," lawyers for the Democracy Forward Foundation had told the Supreme Court. After the court's decision, Skye Peryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said the group will "aggressively pursue every legal option as this case proceeds to ensure that all children in this country have access to the public education they deserve." The Justice Department had told the Supreme Court that the harms to the government from having to rehire the workers as the litigation continues are greater than any harms the challengers said they'll suffer from diminished department services. The department also opposed the challenge on procedural grounds. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court says Trump can fire Education Department workers
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Jon Stewart Hits 'MAGA World' With A Brutal Wake-Up Call About The Real Trump
'Daily Show' host Jon Stewart on Monday tore into President Donald Trump for backtracking on the release of files related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump is demanding that people stop talking about Epstein, causing some of the president's most loyal supporters to turn on him. 'Surprisingly, MAGA world, for the first time in memory, isn't just slavishly acquiescing to Trump's reality distortion field,' he said, and played clips of figures on the right trashing the president after the Justice Department said last week that the long-rumored Epstein client list doesn't exist. Stewart said MAGA world is 'in open revolt,' with some even burning their infamous red hats. 'MAGA is losing their shit right now,' he said. 'They cannot believe what they're seeing. Trump is lying? Dismissing reasonable concerns as bad-faith whining? attacking anyone who disagrees?' He offered a message directly to the MAGA-verse. 'As a resident of blue America, can I just say right now to my red colleagues that my pronouns are 'how does' and 'my ass taste,'' he said. 'The Trump that you're just experiencing now, to your deep disappointment and dismay, is the dude we've been dealing with the whole fucking time. You just didn't realize it 'cuz he's been nice to you.' As an example, he showed how Trump treats disasters in red states very differently from those in blue ones, offering quick assistance in Texas after last week's deadly floods, but threatening to withhold aid in California during the fires earlier this year. 'Whatever you need, daddy's here ― because you're the child he wanted,' Stewart told the red states. But the blue ones? 'We're Eric,' he said. See more in his Monday night monologue:
