What percentage of ICE arrests result in no charges or dropped cases?
Executive summary
There is no single, authoritative figure in the provided reporting that directly answers “what percentage of ICE arrests result in no charges or dropped cases”; available public datasets and reporting instead offer closely related proxies. Using those proxies, a substantial share of people ICE arrests and detains have no criminal conviction — roughly 71–73.6% in national snapshots cited — and certain courtroom practices (notably courthouse arrest dismissal motions) can result in large shares of cases being funneled into expedited removal (79.6% of same‑day oral motions granted in one analysis) [1] [2] [3].
1. What the reporters measured — convictions, charges, and administrative removals
Most of the documents supplied do not track the narrow legal outcome the question asks (percentage of arrests that end with “no charges” or that are “dropped”); rather, they report related metrics such as the share of detainees without criminal convictions, the composition of arrests by criminal-history category, and procedural outcomes in immigration court—metrics that are useful but not identical to “dropped charges” [4] [5] [2].
2. The closest national proxies: detainees without convictions
Two independent reporting threads converge on the same broad picture: as ICE arrests and detention rose in 2025, a large majority of people in ICE custody had no criminal conviction. Migration Policy reported that as of September 2025, 71% of ICE detainees had no criminal conviction [1], and TRAC’s compilation put the share with no criminal conviction at about 73.6% of those held as of November 30, 2025 [2]. Those figures are strong evidence that many administrative arrests target people who lack a prior criminal conviction, but they do not show whether criminal charges were filed and later dropped or whether the immigration case itself was dismissed.
3. Courthouse arrests and expedited removal: high immediate dismissal rates
Reporting by the American Immigration Council documents a distinct courtroom mechanism: ICE attorneys asking immigration judges to dismiss pending immigration cases on the spot and move individuals into expedited removal, with 79.6% of oral motions adjudicated the same day being granted in the sample analyzed — a practice that can convert ongoing proceedings into faster deportations and effectively “drop” the original matter in immigration court [3]. That statistic is narrowly about oral motions adjudicated the same day and varies dramatically by court, so it is a partial but striking indicator of outcomes linked to arrests at courthouses.
4. Local variation undermines a single national percentage
State and locality data show wide differences: Utah’s reporting for Sept. 2023–Dec. 2024 found 71% of ICE arrests there involved people with convictions, 22% had pending charges, and under 7% were solely for alleged immigration violations [6], while analyses for California show lower arrest rates but a rising share of arrestees without criminal charges in some regions [7]. Prison Policy’s review emphasizes ICE’s operational dependence on local law enforcement and court practices, making arrest-to-charge outcomes highly dependent on local cooperation and prosecutorial decisions [8]. These regional differences mean a single national “percent dropped/no charge” number would mask important variation.
5. Why the exact percentage remains elusive and what to use instead
ICE’s public statistics and third‑party compilations (Deportation Data Project, TRAC, ICE’s own dashboards) permit tracing arrests, detentions, and removals, but the provided reporting does not contain a clear, consistent national tally of arrests that were later not charged or whose charges were formally dropped after arrest [4] [5]. The most defensible, evidence‑backed statement from the supplied sources is that roughly 70–74% of people in ICE custody during late‑2025 had no criminal conviction [1] [2] and that courtroom dismissal practices (where documented) can have immediate and high rates of grant (79.6% same‑day grants in one study) [3]. Those figures should be treated as proxies, not a direct answer to “dropped charges,” and they come with strong geographic variation [8] [6].
6. Bottom line
The supplied reporting does not produce a single definitive percentage for “ICE arrests that result in no charges or dropped cases.” Using available proxies, roughly 70–74% of people held in ICE custody in late‑2025 lacked a criminal conviction [1] [2], and in the courthouse‑arrest context a reported 79.6% of same‑day oral dismissal motions were granted in one analysis [3]; local data show sharply different mixes of convictions, pending charges, and immigration‑only arrests [6] [7]. Any narrower claim would require case‑level tracing across arrest, local charging, and immigration docket outcomes that the provided sources do not supply [5].