What were the leading reported offenses or case types underlying ICE arrests in 2025?
Executive summary
The leading reported offenses cited as the basis for ICE arrests in 2025 clustered into two broad categories: immigration-related violations (including illegal reentry and administrative removability) and low-level criminal convictions or pending charges—most commonly traffic offenses (DUI and other non-civil traffic crimes), drug possession, and assault—while federal agencies emphasized “worst of the worst” violent criminals in public statements [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Independent data releases and NGO analyses show large state-by-state variation and a substantial share of arrests originating from local jails or reflecting pending/minor charges rather than violent felony convictions [6] [7] [8].
1. What ICE and DHS officially report as the top case types
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations historically reports that the agency most frequently arrests people with convictions for DUI, drug possession, assault and criminal (non-civil) traffic offenses such as hit-and-run or leaving the scene of an accident, and its public releases and DHS statements have highlighted arrests of people convicted of violent crimes and serious sex offenses to underscore public‑safety priorities [1] [4] [5].
2. Independent datasets: traffic, drug, assault, and immigration charges dominate numerically
Government data provided to researchers and compiled by the Deportation Data Project, and analyses by state reporters, show that the most common “most serious” criminal designations among ICE arrestees in 2025 were traffic-related offenses (including DUI), followed by drug offenses, assault, and immigration charges such as illegal reentry—patterns visible in state breakdowns like Colorado’s dataset where DUI was the top designation and assault, drugs, traffic and illegal reentry followed [7] [2] [9].
3. Large share of arrests involved pending charges or no convictions, especially in some states
Analyses by advocacy groups and fact-checkers found that a sizable proportion of people arrested by ICE during 2025 either had pending criminal charges or no prior convictions at all; several reports show that in some jurisdictions the share of people with only pending charges or minor convictions was markedly higher than in others, and a Cato‑style analysis cited by reporters found roughly 5% with violent convictions while traffic and immigration offenses were most common [6] [3] [9].
4. Tactics and location of arrest reshape the offense mix
Researchers and The Washington Post documented a tactical shift in 2025 from predominantly custodial arrests made at jails to growing “at‑large” community arrests and targeted roving operations, a change that increased arrests of people without prior convictions or with minor charges and amplified state-level variation tied to local cooperation policies [10] [6] [8].
5. Messengers matter: competing narratives from DHS and advocates
DHS and ICE public statements framed the year’s operations as focused on “worst of the worst” offenders—naming aggravated assaults, child sex crimes, and drug dealers in press releases—to justify escalated enforcement, while advocacy organizations, academic centers and news outlets emphasized that numerically many arrests involved low‑level traffic or immigration offenses or people with no convictions, an implicit political agenda clash around the scope and purpose of interior enforcement [4] [5] [6] [11].
6. The data caveat and the bottom line
Public ICE statistics and the Deportation Data Project provide arrest‑level fields that allow counting of “most serious” charges, but reporting limitations—variations across state jails, the distinction between pending charges and convictions, and ICE’s own reporting constraints—mean conclusions must be drawn from multiple sources: overall, traffic offenses (including DUI and other criminal traffic), drug offenses, assault, illegal reentry/immigration violations, and a large category of people with pending or no convictions were the leading reported case types underlying ICE arrests in 2025, even as federal messaging highlighted a smaller subset of violent offenders [1] [7] [2] [3] [4].