How does ICE prioritize deportations for non-criminal immigrants?
Executive summary
ICE says enforcement is supposed to be targeted at threats to national security and public safety and constrained by agency priorities, funding and capacity [1], but recent data and multiple independent analyses show the agency has shifted toward broad interior arrests and detention of people without criminal convictions — a strategy enabled by vast budget increases and detention expansion that has produced record detention populations and higher deportation‑from‑custody rates [2] [3] [4].
1. How ICE officially frames priorities — law, threats and capacity
The agency’s public guidance describes Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) as prioritizing “threats to national security or public safety” and other cases that “undermine the integrity of U.S. immigration laws,” and it notes that officers prioritize enforcement based on agency and Department priorities, funding and capacity [1]; that language allows room for discretion but ties actions to broad, politically set priorities.
2. What operational changes shifted focus onto non‑criminals
Independent analysts document that ICE dramatically increased at‑large and street arrests and transfers from local jails, and that in practice the agency became “much less likely to target people with criminal convictions,” producing a sevenfold increase in arrests of people without criminal convictions during the first nine months of the current administration’s term [5]; reporters and watchdogs likewise find arrests of people with no criminal record surged, driven by policies that lifted prior limits on arrest locations and amplified use of roving and workplace operations [4] [6].
3. Detention expansion as the engine of prioritization
Record increases in detention beds and an $11.25 billion budget boost for detention materially reshaped enforcement choices: with vastly more capacity and funding to jail people — including families — ICE can detain many non‑criminals, which reduces releases and increases removals directly from custody, a dynamic documented in agency and NGO reporting showing detention rising to historic levels and deportations from custody outpacing releases [3] [2] [4].
4. Data on who is being detained and deported
Multiple datasets show the composition of ICE custody shifted toward people without criminal convictions: TRAC reported roughly three‑quarters of people in ICE detention had no criminal conviction as of January 2026 [7], while ICE and independent compilations indicate a growing share of arrests and removals are interior operations targeting immigration violations rather than criminal convictions [1] [8].
5. Mechanics: how non‑criminals are prioritized in practice
Priority emerges from a mix of policy, partnerships and tools: federal directives and funding incentives, agreements that let ICE pick up people from local jails, expanded surveillance (license‑plate readers, data sharing), and large Alternatives to Detention and monitoring programs that together identify, arrest and detain people far from the border — producing interior removals [9] [10] [1].
6. The stated rationale and competing narratives
The administration and DHS present the effort as removing “the worst of the worst” and protecting public safety [11], but watchdogs and civil‑rights organizations argue the real aim is sweeping deportations that pressure people into abandoning legal claims and accept removal, pointing to detention as leverage and to arrests of asylum seekers, green‑card applicants and others without criminal records [3] [2] [4].
7. Limits of the reporting and open questions
Available reporting and government statistics document broad trends — more arrests, more detainees without convictions, and more deportations from custody [5] [7] [2] — but public sources are uneven about internal ICE targeting memos, case‑level decisionmaking, and how enforcement choices vary regionally; on those specifics the reporting does not provide a complete, auditable account [1] [8].
8. What this means for non‑criminal immigrants
In sum, prioritization for non‑criminal immigrants has been driven less by individual risk assessments than by policy and resource choices: expanded detention capacity, relaxed arrest location limits, and interior arrest strategies convert administrative immigration violations into opportunities for detention and removal, producing a system that routinely targets people without criminal convictions even as officials frame operations around public‑safety goals [2] [5] [3].