By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The number of people booked into immigration detention who have been charged only with immigration violations has jumped eight-fold since President Donald Trump took office, government data shows, undercutting his anti-crime message.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention statistics show the number of detainees arrested by ICE with no other criminal charges or convictions rose from about 860 in January to 7,800 this month – a more than 800% increase.
Those arrested and detained with criminal charges or convictions also rose, but at a lower rate of 91%.
Trump took office in January pledging to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, framing the push as needed to remove serious criminals. The White House said ICE had arrested more than 100,000 immigrants as of early June, putting the daily average at more than double the pace last year under former President Joe Biden.
Still, it remains far below what Trump would need to remove millions from the U.S. Top White House official Stephen Miller in late May demanded that ICE begin arresting 3,000 migrants per day – three times an earlier quota of 1,000.
Raids in Los Angeles and in other parts of the country swept in non-criminals and have sparked protests calling for ICE to stand down.
“When you have an agenda that sets quotas at 3,000 arrests a day, there are not even enough people that pose a public safety threat to meet that number,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration think tank.
Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has frequently highlighted arrests of convicted criminals. During recent raids in Los Angeles, DHS put out a press release with mug shots of migrants convicted of murder, a child sex offense and drug trafficking, among other serious crimes.
At the same time, DHS stopped issuing detailed statistical reports on immigration enforcement after Trump took office, which makes it challenging to gauge the scope of the crackdown.
Unpublished ICE statistics reviewed by Reuters show people with criminal convictions of any type – including minor crimes – made up only a third of the 177,000 people arrested and booked into detention from October 2024 through the end of May.
Trump took office on January 20, which means the figures include 3.5 months of Biden’s presidency.
Some 62,400 people with criminal convictions were arrested by ICE and placed in detention, the figures show. The top charges were traffic offenses or immigration-related crimes, such as illegal reentry, making up 39% of the total.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
NO ONE EXEMPT
Speaking to MSNBC earlier this week, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said ICE raids in Los Angeles focused on criminals but that non-criminals were picked up, too.
“If ICE is there and arrests that bad guy and other aliens are there, we’re going to arrest them,” Homan said.
In a letter this week to Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, six Hispanic Republican lawmakers led by U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales called on the Trump administration to focus enforcement on criminals.
“Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives,” they wrote.
U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, was forcibly removed from a press conference on Thursday when he tried to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question about immigration arrests.
Padilla was pushed out of the room, shoved to the ground and handcuffed by security.
“You can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers,” Padilla told a press conference after the incident.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Comments