How does ICE define and report 'criminal conviction' versus 'pending charge' in its public statistics?
Executive summary
ICE publicly reports detainees in three mutually reported buckets — those with U.S. criminal convictions, those with pending criminal charges in the U.S., and those with no convictions or pending charges — but the agency’s categorization rules and how officials use the categories can produce misleading impressions about who is “criminal” [1] [2]. Independent analysts note two key technical points: ICE assigns people with both prior convictions and open charges to the “conviction” category, and agency releases often do not show the severity or disposition of charges, which complicates comparisons and public claims [2] [3].
1. What ICE’s dashboard actually reports, in plain terms
ICE’s public statistics present three headline groups — individuals with criminal convictions in the United States, individuals with pending criminal charges in the United States, and individuals with no known convictions or pending charges — and posts aggregate arrest, removal and detention counts organized by those labels [1].
2. How ICE allocates a person who has both a conviction and pending charges
ICE’s own counting rule — confirmed in independent analysis of agency data — is to place an individual who has a prior criminal conviction and also has pending criminal charges only in the “criminal conviction” category, not in both categories, meaning the “pending” bucket is intended to capture people who have charges but no prior convictions [2].
3. Why “pending charges” and “convictions” are not interchangeable in law or data
A pending criminal charge is an allegation that has not been resolved by dismissal, conviction or acquittal, and is legally distinct from a conviction; multiple legal explainers underscore that a charge is not a finding of guilt [4]. ICE’s statistics therefore separate those legal statuses, but public statements and some DHS/ICE framing sometimes lump convictions and pending charges together when arguing the agency targets “criminal illegal aliens,” which inflates the appearance of convicted offenders if one assumes those two buckets are equivalent [5].
4. What the numbers omit or obscure — severity, foreign convictions, and timing
ICE’s published counts generally do not break down the severity of convictions and charges in headline tables, and journalists and policy groups have emphasized that many convictions reported in some years are for lower-level offenses such as DUI, drug possession or traffic crimes [2] [6]. Critics also note that ICE summaries typically reflect U.S. convictions/charges and do not always account publicly for violent offenses alleged or adjudicated abroad, an issue DHS officials have invoked to explain apparent gaps between rhetoric and the agency’s U.S.-centric statistics [7].
5. How advocates and researchers interpret the categories differently
Advocates, legal researchers and think tanks use ICE’s categorical rules to show that a large share of detainees lack U.S. convictions — for example, analyses finding majorities or plurality without convictions point to the agency’s separate “pending” and “no-charge” buckets — while DHS spokespeople point to combined totals of convicted-plus-pending to defend targeting claims, revealing an implicit rhetorical agenda that reshapes the same public data [3] [5] [8].
6. Practical implications for readers and reporters
Understanding ICE’s definitions matters because treating “pending charges” as equivalent to “convictions” in public claims misstates legal status and can mislead about public-safety prioritization; careful readers should check whether analysts are citing the conviction-only figure, the pending-only figure, or a combined total, and must note that ICE’s assignment rule (convicted people with pending charges counted only as convicted) tends to understate the separate “pending” bucket while avoiding double-counting [2] [4].