What proportion of ICE arrests involve people with prior felony convictions?
Executive summary
Available independent data show a large share of people in ICE custody have no U.S. criminal conviction: TRAC reports 47,964 of 65,135 — about 73.6% — held in ICE detention had no criminal conviction as of November 16, 2025 [1]. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS/ICE) repeatedly states a very different figure in press releases — claiming roughly 70% of recent ICE arrests were of people “charged or convicted” of crimes in the U.S. [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. What the independent agency data say: most people in ICE detention lack criminal convictions
TRAC’s immigration monitoring of ICE detention shows that, as of mid-November 2025, 47,964 out of 65,135 people held in ICE detention — 73.6% — had no criminal conviction on their U.S. record [1]. TRAC also notes many people ICE counts as “convicted” had relatively minor offenses such as traffic violations, and that ICE’s aggregate detention counts and arrest tallies can shift rapidly month to month [1] [6].
2. What DHS and ICE are publicly claiming: a 70% “criminal” arrest rate
Multiple DHS/ICE news releases in November 2025 repeatedly assert that “70 percent of all ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.” and highlight operations arresting people with violent or sex-offense convictions [2] [3] [4] [5]. Those releases list individual arrests and operation totals and frame enforcement as focused on the “worst of the worst” [2] [3].
3. Why those two claims can both exist: differing definitions and populations
ICE’s press claims refer to “arrests” made in specific enforcement operations and to people “charged or convicted” in the U.S., whereas TRAC’s figure describes the composition of the total detained population at a point in time and separates those with no criminal convictions [1] [7]. ICE’s public statements often emphasize results from targeted operations that prioritize people with criminal histories, while TRAC aggregates all detained individuals — including people with immigration-only violations, people held after border encounters, and collateral or warrantless arrests [1] [7] [8].
4. Evidence gaps and limits in current reporting
Available sources do not provide a single authoritative, contemporaneous percentage that reconciles ICE’s “70% charged or convicted” claim with TRAC’s detention snapshot showing 73.6% with no convictions [1] [2]. ICE’s statistics page structures arrest data by country and by categories of criminal history but does not present a simple national daily proportion comparable to TRAC’s detention breakdown in the sources provided here [7]. Independent reporting and court actions (e.g., Chicago, Colorado) document large interior arrest operations and legal challenges over warrantless arrests, indicating enforcement practices and populations vary by district and over time [9] [8].
5. Competing narratives and incentives to frame the numbers
DHS/ICE press releases serve a law-enforcement and political communication purpose: they highlight arrests of people with violent or sexual convictions and present a high-proportion “criminal” arrest rate to validate enforcement priorities [2] [3] [4] [5]. TRAC, an independent research group, aims to show the broader makeup of detention, including many people without convictions; its numbers can undermine claims that most detained are “criminal aliens” [1] [10]. Both sources have clear incentives: ICE to justify operations and public safety messaging, TRAC to illuminate system-wide trends and the presence of non-criminal detainees [1] [10].
6. What a careful answer to the original question looks like
There is no single figure in the provided reporting that definitively answers “what proportion of ICE arrests involve people with prior felony convictions.” TRAC’s detained-population snapshot shows most people in ICE detention lack any U.S. conviction (73.6% no conviction) while DHS/ICE press statements argue roughly 70% of their arrests target people “charged or convicted” in the U.S. [1] [2]. Reconciling those statements requires access to ICE’s internal arrest-category breakdowns over the same timeframe and a clear definition of “arrest” versus “detained” and “charged” versus “convicted” — details not available in the supplied sources [7].
7. How to get a definitive, comparable number
Request or examine ICE’s raw Enforcement and Removal Operations arrest datasets or the specific case-level data underlying TRAC’s analysis for the same dates, and insist on consistent definitions (e.g., include/exclude pending charges, reentries after removal, collateral arrests). The ICE statistics portal describes categories but the supplied snapshots do not provide the reconciled national percentage needed to resolve the contradiction [7] [1].
Limitations: This analysis uses only the supplied sources. Many relevant primary ICE data fields and a reconciled time-matched crosswalk between arrests and detained-population counts are not present in those sources; therefore I do not assert which headline percentage is the definitive one for all ICE arrests [1] [2] [7].