Trump crackdown snares more migrants with no US criminal records
Federal agents stalk immigration courts as they try to meet deportation quotas set by the White House.
WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump, who has vowed to target the 'worst of the worst' in his mass deportation campaign, is overseeing a crackdown that is increasingly ensnaring foreigners without criminal records.
About 37 per cent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in July were of people with no US criminal convictions or pending charges, according to federal data compiled by the University of California at Berkeley's Deportation Data Project and updated this week.
That was up from 13 per cent in December, the last full month of Mr Joe Biden's presidency.
'It's impossible both to have mass deportations and to concentrate deportations on the worst of the worst,' said Professor David Hausman, faculty director of the Deportation Data Project.
Despite the rising share of arrests of people with no US criminal records, the data also shows that the Trump administration is arresting a lot more immigrants overall, including those with US criminal convictions or pending charges.
Arrests of such people more than doubled to about 92,000 during Mr Trump's first six months in office compared with the final half-year of the Biden administration.
The information from the Deportation Data Project includes criminal convictions and charges in the United States.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said agents are also capturing people accused of crimes in other countries. The agency regularly posts on social media about criminal arrests, sometimes highlighting foreign allegations while rarely providing details of those cases.
'Many of the individuals that are counted as 'non-criminals' are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more,' said Ms Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs at DHS. 'They just don't have a rap sheet in the US.'
Trump v. Biden numbers
The Trump administration got off to a quick start in ramping up immigration arrests, but the numbers plateaued and briefly dipped from March to May.
In late May, the tally surged after a meeting in which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered ICE officials to
make at least 3,000 arrests a day .
While the Justice Department has denied there is an arrest quota, ICE is stepping up enforcement.
Armed with more than US$150 billion (S$192 billion) in newly approved border and enforcement funding, the administration is pushing ahead on plans to add detention beds and recruit thousands of new ICE officers.
For now, however, while Mr Trump has ramped up arrests of criminals, his dragnet is also sweeping up even more people who have never been convicted of a crime in the US.
Such people accounted for a little more than 60 per cent of ICE arrests during his first six months in office, up from 44 per cent during Mr Biden's last six months as president.
Of convicts arrested under Mr Trump, the most serious crime for 8 per cent involved homicide and manslaughter; human trafficking and alien smuggling; or rape and other sex crimes. The comparable number for Mr Biden's last six months was 10 per cent.
For both presidents, about 58 per cent of the arrested convicts' most-serious crimes were driving under the influence; assault, battery and the like; drug offences; and criminal immigration violations. BLOOMBERG
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