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Fact check: What percentage of ICE deportations involve individuals with felony convictions?
Executive Summary
The available materials do not provide a precise, single percentage of ICE deportations that involved individuals with felony convictions; official ICE reporting for Fiscal Year 2024 and related accounts emphasize enforcement activity without breaking out felony-conviction removals as a percent of total removals. Reporting from late September and early October 2025 highlights that a substantial share of people arrested or detained by ICE have no criminal record or only non-felony charges, while DHS press releases spotlight operations targeting serious criminals, creating contrasting framings in the public record [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Why the numbers don’t add up — agency reports omit the specific felony percentage
ICE’s FY2024 Annual Report and the related enforcement summaries enumerate arrests, administrative actions, and removals, but they do not present a clear percentage of removals tied specifically to felony convictions, leaving a gap between enforcement totals and conviction-level detail. Independent reporting notes aggregate detention population splits between those with a criminal record and those without, but these counts do not translate directly into deportation percentages, nor do they distinguish felony versus misdemeanor or charges pending versus convictions in the publicly released tables [1] [2].
2. Detention snapshots suggest many detainees lack felony records
Multiple accounts from late September 2025 report that nearly a third of people arrested and booked into ICE detention had no criminal history, and government tallies show comparable counts of detainees with and without criminal records—15,725 with some criminal record versus 16,523 without in one dataset—indicating that a large share of detentions are not tied to felony convictions [2] [3]. These data points imply that counting only those with felony convictions would yield a smaller portion of the detained population, though they do not directly quantify removals.
3. DHS messaging emphasizes “worst of the worst” arrests, shaping public perception
A DHS October 1, 2025 press release highlights Operation Midway Blitz and stresses arrests of individuals accused of serious crimes such as murder and rape, using the “worst of the worst” framing that foregrounds felony-level cases. This communication strategy creates the impression that ICE removals disproportionately target violent felons, even as the agency’s aggregate statistics do not disclose the specific share of removals tied to felony convictions, producing a disconnect between operational highlights and comprehensive data [4] [1].
4. News analyses stress growing share of non-criminal detainees, offering an alternate narrative
Journalistic investigations from September 25–26, 2025 underline a rising number of detained individuals with no criminal record, arguing that enforcement has expanded beyond the agency’s stated public-safety priorities. These pieces use detention counts and booking data to question whether deportation practice aligns with rhetoric about prioritizing violent felons, thereby advancing an alternate narrative that ICE is detaining and removing many who lack felony convictions [3] [2].
5. Methodological gaps: arrests, detention, conviction, and removal are different measures
The datasets cited mix administrative arrests, at-large arrests, detention inventory snapshots, and press-release tallies of targeted operations; none provide a simple conversion to a percentage of removals attributable to felony convictions. Arrests do not equal convictions; detentions do not equal removals; press releases highlight subsets of interest. The absence of a standardized public breakout—felony-convicted removals divided by total removals—prevents calculating a definitive percentage from the available materials [1] [2].
6. Competing agendas shape which numbers get emphasized
DHS materials emphasize operations against serious criminals to signal law-and-order priorities, while investigative reporting emphasizes the increasing presence of non-criminal detainees to argue the enforcement footprint is broader than claimed priorities. Both framings use selective slices of the same datasets: DHS highlights individual high-profile arrests; reporters highlight detention inventory and booking records. Each approach serves distinct policy and political narratives, complicating efforts to infer the true share of felony-conviction removals [4] [3] [2].
7. Conclusion and what would resolve the question definitively
The only clear conclusion from the available sources is that no single cited document provides the exact percentage of ICE deportations involving individuals with felony convictions. Reconciling the contrasting portrayals would require ICE or DHS to publish a standardized table showing total removals with a breakdown by criminal conviction status (felony, misdemeanor, administrative, none) and disposition dates. Until such disaggregated official data are released, assertions about the precise percentage remain unsupported by the supplied documents [1] [2].