Which 2025 ICE incidents led to criminal charges and what were the filed indictments?
Executive summary
A set of high-profile ICE enforcement actions in 2025 involved individuals who either already faced criminal indictments or were arrested on the basis of criminal allegations; federal and DHS press materials highlight murders, sexual-assault convictions, homicide and robbery charges, and past foreign firearms charges among those taken into custody [1] [2] [3]. Public reporting and watchdog studies show, however, that much of ICE’s large-scale enforcement also swept up people without U.S. criminal convictions, and available sources do not provide full federal indictment texts for every named arrest [4] [5] [6].
1. ICE’s “worst of the worst” roster — named arrests and the criminal charges cited
DHS and ICE released lists of individuals their agents arrested in 2025 and described the criminal histories or pending charges that justified custody: for example, ICE said it arrested people convicted of sexual assault of a child and multiple homicides, and noted specific cases such as Aldrin Guerrero-Muñoz, a long‑term murderer transferred from state custody, and Walter Leonel Perez Rodriguez, described as having convictions for sexual assault of a child and other violent offenses; those DHS summaries state the underlying convictions and the fact of ICE custody but do not reproduce federal indictments [1].
2. Cases flagged in DHS and local reporting with explicit criminal charges
Several incidents in DHS/ICE materials and related local reporting identify specific criminal allegations: ICE materials recount the arrest of Xocop‑Vicente in a November 24, 2025 hit‑and‑run that killed a 15‑year‑old in Charlotte—an event described by ICE and local reporting as the basis for arrest and criminal proceedings [3]. DHS materials also list Santos Paulino Vasquez‑Ramirez as charged with homicide and robbery after allegedly strangling a taxi driver on December 1, 2025 [2]. Aurora police charged Castellano Fonesca with homicide after an apartment shooting that left one dead and another critically injured; ICE later lodged custody and arrest paperwork as part of removal efforts [2]. These accounts indicate state criminal charges (homicide, robbery, sexual offenses) accompanied ICE custody, but the sources are DHS/ICE summaries and local charging announcements rather than court indictment dockets [2] [3] [1].
3. Foreign criminal allegations and transnational assertions used to justify ICE arrests
DHS press statements also cite non‑U.S. charges to explain arrests: for instance, DHS described an arrest of a man alleged to have been charged with firearms offenses in Honduras in 2022 who then allegedly bribed his way out of jail before entering the United States, with ICE arresting him in December 2025 [2]. ICE’s public messaging routinely references INTERPOL Red Notices and foreign criminal allegations—materials that describe the allegations but do not substitute for U.S. indictments or lay out the precise federal charges ICE filed domestically [2].
4. Where reporting diverges: large numbers without U.S. indictments or convictions
Independent researchers and watchdogs show that a substantial share of people ICE detained in 2025 had no U.S. criminal conviction or even pending U.S. charges; the Cato analysis of leaked ICE data and Deportation Data Project reporting find major increases in detentions of people without convictions, and independent fact‑checks note that many arrests did not correspond to indictments or convictions in U.S. courts [4] [5] [7]. Brookings and other analysts likewise document practices—at‑large arrests, custodial arrests from local jails—that expanded ICE custody without necessarily producing new federal criminal indictments [8] [5].
5. Limitations in source material and what remains unconfirmed
Public DHS/ICE press releases list names, alleged past convictions, and local criminal charges as justification for arrests but generally do not attach federal indictment documents or charging papers; many media and watchdog sources corroborate the increase in arrests but emphasize that an elevated share of detainees lacked U.S. criminal charges, and analyses caution against equating ICE custody with new federal indictments in every case [1] [4] [5]. Therefore, while several specific 2025 incidents are repeatedly tied to state homicide, sexual‑assault, robbery, or foreign criminal allegations in ICE/DHS materials [3] [2] [1], the public record assembled in these sources does not universally supply the formal text of indictments or clarify which arrests produced new federal criminal prosecutions versus administrative removal proceedings [4] [5].