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Trump admin arresting more migrants with no criminal records amid crackdown
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.
President Donald Trump, who has vowed to target the “worst of the worst” in his mass deportation campaign, is overseeing a crackdown that’s increasingly ensnaring foreigners without US criminal records.
About 37% of Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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’s up from 13% in December, the last full month of Joe Biden’s presidency.
“It’s impossible both to have mass deportations and to concentrate deportations on the worst of the worst,” said David Hausman, a law professor and 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 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 US. The Department of Homeland Security has said that 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 Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs at DHS. “They just don’t have a rap sheet in the US.”
The Trump administration got off to a quick start in ramping up immigration arrests, but the numbers plateaued and briefly dipped in the spring. 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’s an arrest quota, ICE is stepping up enforcement. Armed with more than $150 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 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% of ICE arrests during his first six months in office, up from 44% during Biden’s last six months as president.
Of convicts arrested under Trump, the most serious crime for 8% involved homicide and manslaughter; human trafficking and alien smuggling; or rape and other sex crimes. The comparable number for Biden’s last six months was 10%.
For both presidents, about 58% of the arrested convicts’ most-serious crimes were driving under the influence; assault, battery and the like; drug offenses; and criminal immigration violations.
