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How did 2025 deportation rates for felony convictions compare to prior years (2020–2024)?
Executive summary
Deportations in 2025 show a sharp uptick in overall removals and a contested picture on the share tied to felony convictions: DHS/White House statements claim about 70% of arrests are of people "charged with or convicted of a crime" [1], while multiple independent data snapshots and analyses report a large and growing share of people in ICE custody with no criminal conviction — often cited as roughly 65–75% [2] [3] [4]. Available sources do not provide a clean, single yearly time series that directly compares 2025 felony-conviction deportation rates to each year 2020–2024 in the same metric and methodology; reporting instead offers competing snapshots and different denominators (arrests vs. removals vs. detention populations) [5] [6].
1. What the agencies say: official, high‑level claims
The Department of Homeland Security posted a high‑profile statement in 2025 asserting that roughly 70% of ICE arrests are of "criminal illegal aliens charged with or convicted of a crime" and touted more than 527,000 deportations to date in 2025, projecting nearly 600,000 by year‑end [1]. That framing presents 2025 as a return to criminal‑focused enforcement and emphasizes criminal convictions as the dominant category among people ICE is arresting and removing [1].
2. Independent reporting and watchdog snapshots tell a different story
Independent outlets and data projects published in mid‑2025 found the opposite pattern in several measures: The Independent and a Cato Institute–cited dataset said only about 30% (or, in another nonpublic count, 35%) of people in detention had criminal convictions and that 65–71% had no criminal convictions — with violent offenses constituting a small fraction of criminal records [2] [3] [4]. Reuters and other analyses documented increases in arrests overall but noted that arrests of people with criminal charges rose at a lower rate than total arrests (about a 101% rise for those with charges, compared with a much larger jump in noncriminal arrests) [7].
3. Different metrics, different stories — arrests vs. detention vs. removals
Comparing "felony conviction rates" across years depends on which metric is used. ICE’s public statistics classify people by conviction status in enforcement tables [5], OHSS publishes monthly enforcement tables that can be used for trend analysis but with reporting lags [6], and third‑party trackers aggregate snapshots of the detention population [4]. The DHS press release emphasizes aggregate removals/arrests [1] while independent analyses focus on the composition of detention beds and arrests by conviction status [2] [3]. Because the sources use different denominators (arrests vs. removals vs. those in custody) they can reach opposite conclusions about whether deportations in 2025 are more concentrated on people with felonies than in 2020–2024.
4. What we can say about change since 2020–2024
Available sources document a substantial rise in deportation activity in 2025 relative to recent years, and they report diverging trends in the criminality mix: DHS claims a 70% criminal proportion among arrests in 2025 [1], while independent snapshots show a majority without criminal convictions and a fall in the share of violent‑conviction cases compared with earlier years [2] [3] [7]. However, none of the provided materials supply a consistent, year‑by‑year comparable series of "percentage of deportations for felony convictions" for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 using the same metric, so a precise numeric comparison across those six years is not available in current reporting [6].
5. Reasons for divergent figures — incentives and methodology
Differences reflect agency messaging incentives and methodological choices. DHS/ICE statements emphasize removals and highlight criminal cases to justify enforcement actions [1]. Independent analysts and media focused on the makeup of detention populations and nonpublic arrest datasets that capture many noncriminal immigration violations and traffic offenses, finding 65–75% with no criminal conviction in custody snapshots [2] [3] [4]. The choice to count "arrests" versus "removals," to include pending charges, or to classify traffic offenses as criminal changes the headline percentage substantially [5] [7].
6. Bottom line for your original question
Available reporting shows 2025 had far higher deportation/ arrest volumes and that there is a sharp dispute over whether most of those removed or arrested were felons: DHS claims about 70% criminal arrests [1], while independent datasets and reporting suggest a majority in custody had no criminal conviction and that violent/felonies made up a smaller slice than earlier periods [2] [3] [7]. Because the sources do not provide a single, consistent time series of felony‑conviction deportation rates for 2020–2024 versus 2025, a definitive year‑by‑year numeric comparison is not possible from the materials provided [6].
If you want, I can: (A) extract month‑level figures from OHSS/ICE tables to construct a comparable series if you supply those specific datasets, or (B) summarize a side‑by‑side table of the differing claims and their denominators from the sources cited above.