How many people deported by ICE in 2025 had criminal records, and what crimes did those people who were deported commit?
Executive summary
Public data and independent analyses show that a large majority of people deported by ICE in 2025 did not have criminal convictions, and those who did were most often convicted of non‑violent or minor offenses; precise counts vary between official releases and external analyses because of differing time frames and classification methods [1] [2] [3]. Using the best available published estimates, roughly 30–35% of deportees in 2025 had criminal convictions — implying on the order of tens of thousands (not a single-digit “millions of criminals”) — and violent convictions comprised only a small share of that group [1] [3].
1. What the official records and trackers actually show about numbers
ICE and DHS maintain operational datasets about arrests, detentions and removals that are the statistical backbone for all reporting, but those public tables are updated on different cadences and can be categorized differently by researchers, which complicates a single-year tally [4] [5]. Journalists and data projects cross‑referenced ICE releases and FOIA data to estimate totals: The Guardian reported the administration had arrested more than 328,000 and deported nearly 327,000 people through late 2025 [6], while TRAC and the Deportation Data Project provide complementary releases and cleaned datasets for analysts [7] [8] [9].
2. How many deportees had criminal convictions — best published estimates and ranges
Multiple independent analyses of ICE data converge on a consistent finding: most people in ICE custody or deported in 2025 lacked criminal convictions. The Cato Institute reported that in November 2025 roughly 70% of deportees had no criminal conviction — which corresponds to about 30% with convictions [1]. TRAC, Brennan Center and other analysts showed similar patterns, finding that more than 70% of detainees had no conviction in several snapshots during 2025 and that the share with convictions had fallen relative to earlier years [3] [2] [9]. Applying those proportions to the near‑327,000 deportation figure yields a rough arithmetic range: on the order of 98,000–114,000 deportees in 2025 with criminal convictions if 30–35% had convictions, with clear caveats about differing denominators and reporting periods [6] [1] [3].
3. What crimes those convicted deportees were convicted of
Across the published analyses, convictions among deportees skew strongly toward non‑violent and lower‑level offenses: traffic offenses, DUI and other misdemeanors appear frequently in state‑level breakdowns cited by researchers and journalists [10] [2]. The Cato and academic dataset analyses note that only a small minority of convicted deportees had violent convictions — estimates in several reports place violent convictions at around 5–9% of convicted cases or lower when considering the whole detained population [1] [3] [2]. Multiple sources emphasize that many classified “criminal” cases were immigration‑related reentry or low‑level state offenses rather than serious violent felonies [4] [3].
4. Limits, competing interpretations and why numbers vary
Differences in the headline figures reflect three concrete methodological issues: ICE’s public tables and the OHSS Persist Dataset use different classification rules and release schedules, causing mismatched denominators [5]; some advocates and think tanks analyzed leaked or FOIA datasets covering specific months rather than the calendar year, producing snapshots that diverge from aggregate year totals [7] [1]; and ICE’s own categories mix people with pending charges, past convictions, immigration reentry offenses, and administrative removals, so “criminal” can mean very different things across sources [4] [10]. Reporters and researchers explicitly warn that a single, definitive count tied to a single, uniformly defined “criminal record” for all deportees in calendar 2025 is not available in the public releases cited here [7] [5].
5. Bottom line for readers evaluating claims
The best public evidence indicates tens of thousands — not the majority — of deported people in 2025 had criminal convictions, and among those convicted most offenses were non‑violent or minor (traffic, DUI, immigration reentry), while violent convictions were a small minority of cases [1] [10] [3]. Any precise headline number depends on which ICE table, time window, and conviction definition a researcher uses; the underlying datasets and independent analyses (ICE, Deportation Data Project, TRAC, Cato, news outlets) should be consulted together for detailed breakdowns [4] [7] [1] [9].