More than a third of approximately 220,000 people arrested by ICE There was no criminal record in the first nine months of the Trump administration, according to new data.
The data, which includes ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to Oct. 15, shows that nearly 75,000 people with no criminal record, were involved in immigration operations that the president and his senior officials said would target murderers, rapists and gang members.
“This goes against what the administration says about people who are convicted felons and that they go after the worst of the worst,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
The numbers provide the most revealing look yet at the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration policies to date. They were shared by the University of California, Berkeley. Deportation Data Projectwhich obtained them through a lawsuit brought against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The data is collected by ICE's internal office, which processes data on arrests, detentions and deportations. In January, the administration stopped regularly releasing detailed information about ICE arrests.
For those arrested with criminal histories, the data does not differentiate between those who committed minor offenses and those who committed more serious crimes, such as rape and murder, which the administration says it is targeting.
And those numbers don't include arrests made by the Border Patrol, which has launched aggressive immigration operations in several cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina. The Border Patrol is currently conducting a sweep. New Orleans.
Border Patrol and ICE are under the Department of Homeland Security, but they are two different agencies with two different missions. Border Patrol agents typically operate along the southern and northern borders, but hundreds have recently been deployed into the interior of the United States to hunt down undocumented immigrants.
“It's a black box about which we know nothing,” Ruiz Soto said. “How many arrests does the Border Patrol make? How many of them lead to removal and under what conditions?”
A DHS spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
ICE field offices have come under intense pressure to increase arrest rates.
In mid-May, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller threatened to fire senior ICE officials unless they began arresting at least 3,000 migrants a day. NBC News previously reported this.
But new data shows that ICE is still falling far short of those goals.
Since Jan. 20, ICE agents have made an average of 824 arrests per day, the data shows. These numbers are still more than double the average number of daily arrests under the Biden administration in 2024, when ICE arrested 312 people per day.
The data also shows that about 90% of people arrested by ICE in mid-October were men. Mexican nationals accounted for the largest share of the total arrests, with about 85,000, followed by Guatemalan nationals, 31,000, and Honduras, 24,000.
More than 60% of those arrested were between 25 and 45 years old.
“Now we're really feeling that pain in the workforce,” said George Carrillo, chief executive officer of the Latin American Construction Council.
Carrillo praised the Trump administration for its border security efforts but noted that ongoing enforcement operations are having a significant impact on companies that hire migrant workers.
“Now even the most conservative Republicans feel it and understand that they need to do something different because now it affects their business,” he said. “And they are concerned about this strategy.”
It's unclear from the data how many of those arrested were deported, but 22,959 are listed as voluntary departures, meaning they left the United States of their own accord.
ICE currently holds 65,000 migrants in detention centers across the country. according to DHS data posted online.
