Are the main raids convicted by ICE in the states with most violent and organized crime?

1. The federal PR line versus the raw numbers

The Department of Homeland Security repeatedly states that roughly 70% of ICE arrests are of people charged or convicted of crimes in the United States, and it highlights high-profile violent offenders in press releases to bolster that figure ^{[1] [5] [6] [7]}, but DHS’s public data does not provide the granular breakdown needed to verify the claim that most raids target violent or organized-crime hotspots ^[2].

2. Independent data: most ICE arrests lack U.S. convictions

Multiple independent data compilations and leaked datasets show a different picture: TRAC counted about 73.6% of people in ICE detention had no criminal conviction as of late November 2025 ^[4], and Cato’s analysis of nonpublic ICE data found that a large share of new book-ins were people without convictions and that only about 8% of detained persons had violent or property crimes, with roughly 5% having violent convictions ^{[3] [2]}.

3. State variation undermines a simple “most violent-state” narrative

Local reporting and research show wide state-to-state variation: DHS touted 212 convicted “worst of the worst” in Minnesota during a focused Operation Metro Surge, but DHS told FOX 9 that those convicted made up about 10% of arrests during that operation and identified 103 violent convictions within that smaller convicted subset — a pattern that reflects targeted publicity of convicted offenders rather than a comprehensive pattern across states ^[8]. Prison Policy notes that in places like New Jersey the most common recorded convictions among those ICE picked up were minor, often traffic offenses, indicating raids do not uniformly map onto violent-crime concentrations ^[9].

4. How operational practices shape arrest counts

ICE’s heavy reliance on local jails and on transfers from state and local custody inflates the share of people with recorded charges or convictions in certain contexts, because ICE often picks up people after arrest by local police even before criminal cases are resolved, and that creates state- and county-level variation that does not necessarily reflect a strategic, crime-focused targeting of high-violence jurisdictions ^{[9] [10]}.

5. The narrow slice of “worst” arrests versus the broader detainee population

DHS’s press releases and website lists highlight convicted violent offenders to make the case that raids remove murderers, child abusers and traffickers ^{[1] [5] [6] [7]}, but those lists represent a subset of detainees; broader datasets show the majority of people in ICE custody during late 2025 had no convictions and many recorded convictions were for nonviolent or minor offenses ^{[4] [3] [2]}.

6. Alternative interpretations and data limits

Supporters of DHS’s framing can point to dozens of individual high-harm cases DHS publicizes as evidence raids are focused on violent actors ^{[1] [5]}, and agencies like CBP publish conviction-type tallies for border encounters that may show different patterns ^[10], but public DHS datasets and independent trackers do not currently allow a clean, nationwide test of the claim that the “main raids” are concentrated in the states with the most violent or organized crime; available evidence instead indicates raids are a mix of targeted arrests of convicted violent criminals and mass operations that capture many nonconvicted individuals ^{[2] [3] [4] [9]}.

Conclusion: direct answer

No — based on available reporting and datasets, the main raids are not predominantly convicted violent or organized-crime figures in a way that maps onto states with the highest violent or organized crime; DHS highlights violent convictions selectively, while independent analyses show most people ICE arrests or detains lack U.S. criminal convictions and only a small fraction have violent convictions ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}.