Criminals make up a shrinking share of ICE arrests

LAST YEAR Donald Trump was running for president on the promise to launch the “largest deportation of criminals in American history”, part of a broader pledge to expel millions of illegal immigrants. Eight months into his presidency immigration arrests have indeed surged, so much so that the administration is scrambling to build new detention centres to hold the newly nabbed. But as our charts show, a growing share of those detained are not convicted criminals—a trend that threatens to erode public support for Mr Trump’s crackdown.

This summer arrests by America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reached their highest level since at least 2020. The agency does not routinely release up-to-date information on its activity, but the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers, has gained access to individual arrest records through freedom-of-information requests. According to their data, in June last year ICE apprehended 8,000 people. This June the total reached 30,000 (see chart 1), though numbers dipped slightly in July. Yet despite the surge the administration remains well short of its target of 3,000 arrests a day (or roughly 90,000 a month).

Most arrests are being made by field offices in Republican states. Raids in Democratic cities like Los Angeles and Chicago may be making headlines, but since Mr Trump’s inauguration ICE offices in Miami (11%), New Orleans (8%) and Dallas (7%) have detained the most immigrants (see chart 2). This focus on red states is not altogether different from Joe Biden’s strategy in the year or so before Mr Trump took office.

The type of arrest varies sharply by state (see chart 3). In Republican states local law enforcement works hand-in-glove with ICE, handing over jailed offenders for deportation. These cases are straightforward as the immigrants are already in custody. In Democratic states, in contrast, officials often resist co-operation. There, ICE must scour homes and businesses to find illegal migrants. As a result, many of the people arrested have no criminal record, their only violation being that they are in America illegally.

The president continues to frame the crackdown as a fight against the “WORST of the WORST” criminals, but the data tell a different story. Since Mr Trump took office, arrests of all groups—convicted criminals, those with pending charges and those with no criminal record—have risen by roughly the same amount, in absolute terms, compared with the same period last year. But in percentage terms arrests of convicted criminals are up by just 70%, while arrests of the other two groups have roughly tripled. The pool of immigrant offenders is relatively small: over the past 40 years federal officials have documented around 425,000 non-citizens with criminal convictions. As a result, the share of “criminal aliens” in ICE’s haul has steadily fallen as arrests have ramped up—and in June, non-criminal arrests outnumbered convicted-criminal ones for the first time since December 2023 (see chart 4).

This drift poses political risks. A majority of Americans back deporting immigrants with criminal records—especially violent offenders—but only a third support removing non-criminals in the country illegally. In July, polling by The Economist/YouGov found that almost two-thirds of Americans, and nearly a third of Trump voters, said the government was making “some” or “many mistakes” in deciding whom to deport (see chart 5). In both groups, that represents an increase of about 10 percentage points since March. Mr Trump’s net approval rating on immigration is currently at -8%.

Yet there are no signs that the administration plans to relent. If anything, it is gearing up to go further. More than 1,000 local and state law-enforcement agencies, mostly in Republican states, have signed on to help with immigration enforcement. Many are now training up. In October the government’s new fiscal year begins. With it comes billions of dollars in increased funding for ICE. ■