Most nabbed in L.A. raids were men with no criminal conviction, picked up off the street

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As Los Angeles became the epicenter of President Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flew to the city and held a news conference, saying the government's objective was to "bring in criminals that have been out on our street far too long."
But data from the days leading up to that June 12 appearance suggest a majority of those who were arrested were not convicted criminals. Most were working-age men, nearly half Mexican.
From June 1 to 10, Immigration and Customs Enforcement data show that early in the crackdown 722 were arrested in the Los Angeles region. The figures were obtained by the Deportation Data Project, a repository of enforcement data at UC Berkeley Law.
A Times analysis found that 69% of those arrested during that period had no criminal conviction and 58% had never been charged with a crime. The median age of someone arrested was 38, and that person was likely to be a man. Nearly 48% were Mexican, 16% were from Guatemala and 8% from El Salvador.
"They're not going after drug kingpins, they're chasing hardworking people through swap meets and Home Depot parking lots," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told The Times. "You can see the impact of these random raids everywhere in our city — families are scared to go eat at restaurants, kids are scared their parents aren't going to return from the store — the fear is there because they've seen videos of people being shoved into unmarked vans by masked men refusing to identify themselves."
While the Trump administration has been pounding the point that they are targeting the "worst of the worst," several data sets released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent days show that percentage of people picked up without a criminal conviction is growing as sweeps become the norm in Los Angeles.
The data cover a seven-county area from San Luis Obispo in the north to Orange County in the south. Experts told The Times the data confirm what many advocates and officials say: that most of the arrests carried out are on the street. Many were executed in open air locations, like car washes, Home Depot parking lots and street vending spots. Immigrant advocates and local officials say the lack of named targets shows the federal agents are simply racially profiling, allegations that Los Angeles officials are using to lay the groundwork for a lawsuit.
Department of Homeland Security officials say the efforts are targeted.
'DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence," said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. "We know who we are targeting ahead of time. If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement is trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability.'
Nationally, the number of people arrested without criminal convictions has jumped significantly and many of those with convictions are nonviolent offenders, according to nonpublic data obtained by the Cato Institute that covers the 2025 fiscal year beginning in Oct. 1 and ending June 15.
"ICE is not primarily detaining people who are public safety threats," said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Serious violent offenders are a very small minority, just 7% of the people that it's taking into custody."
ICE has not released data on criminal records of detainees booked into its custody. But Cato's nonpublic data showed about 9 out of 10 had never been convicted of a violent or property crime and 30% have no criminal record. The most frequent crimes are immigration and traffic offenses.
"That's important because the Department of Homeland Security has made such a big deal about its deportation efforts being focused on people with serious criminal histories," he said.
He also analyzed the UC Berkeley Law data that reflects ICE arrests and found that nationally, five times the number of immigrants without criminal convictions were arrested in the last fiscal year compared with the same period in 2017. He called the figure "staggering." For June alone, he noted that the agency arrested 6,000 people without criminal convictions.
McLaughlin said Monday that "75% of those arrests under this Administration have been of illegal aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges."
The public data reveal that figure is 70% over the course of Trump's second term, but lower in recent weeks.
That data show ICE has booked 204,297 people into detention facilities over the last fiscal year. The figure is considered a good approximation for arrests.
Of those, a week before Trump took office for the second time, 38% of those booked had not been convicted of a crime. Five months into his term, that number had grown to 63%.
Cato's nonpublic data show that the top criminal conviction is immigration followed by a traffic offenses, assaults and drug charges.
Bier pins the shift to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who in May reportedly directed top ICE officials to go beyond target lists and begin arresting people at Home Depots or 7-Eleven convenience stores.
The wider sweeps are stressing the capacity of the detention system, where detainees have reported moldy food, dirty towels and no changes of clothes for more than a week at a time.
A week before Trump took office, there were about 39,000 people held in detention. By June 15, that figure had grown 42% to 56,397.
"It's nearing a historical high," said Austin Kocher, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who tracks immigration data.
And that figure could grow. The administration has asked Congress to fund 100,000 detention beds.
Times staff writer Andrea Castillo and data and graphics journalists Lorena Elebee and Sean Greene contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.