What share of ICE arrests are for immigration reentry versus violent crimes?
Executive summary
Interior ICE arrests in 2025 and early 2026 were overwhelmingly composed of people without violent criminal convictions — multiple independent analyses put the share of those with violent convictions in the single digits (roughly 3–9%) while the largest single category detained by ICE are people with immigration violations or no U.S. criminal convictions (often above 65–70%) [1][2][3][4].
1. What the numbers say: violent-conviction share is very small
Independent researchers and watchdogs analyzing ICE data report that only a small fraction of people arrested by ICE were convicted of violent offenses: TRAC found the share convicted of violent crimes fell from about 9% in January to under 5% by October, with a period showing as low as 3% of arrested-and-detained people having convictions from Sept. 21–Nov. 16 [1]; the Brennan Center and other analysts similarly report roughly 7% convicted of violent offenses among ICE arrests [3]. Cato’s analysis of internal ICE data also shows low shares for violent/property crimes, noting just 8% of detained persons had either a violent or property crime in a given recent window [4].
2. Who makes up the majority: immigration violators and people with no criminal convictions
Multiple data-driven accounts conclude that the dominant group in ICE arrests and detention are people held for immigration violations or with no U.S. criminal convictions: TRAC’s snapshot put roughly 73.6% of those in ICE detention as having no criminal conviction [2], while the Brennan Center and Cato each find that more than two‑thirds of interior ICE arrests are of people without criminal convictions, many of whom are being detained for immigration violations, reentry after deportation, or final orders of removal [3][4].
3. Reentry specifically: important category but precise share unclear in public summaries
ICE’s own classification explicitly includes “reentering after deportation” and other immigration‑only categories among ERO arrests (reentry, immigration fugitives, visa overstays), and agency reporting says historically many ERO arrests are immigration violators rather than violent felons [5]. Several analyses infer that a large portion of the non‑convicted detainees are being held for immigration violations including illegal reentry, but the public summaries in these sources do not consistently break out “illegal reentry” as a single, nationally comparable percentage separate from other immigration‑only cases, so an exact public figure for reentry‑specific arrests cannot be robustly stated from the provided reporting [5][3].
4. Conflicting official framing and why numbers diverge
DHS and ICE spokespeople emphasize that most ICE arrestees have convictions or pending criminal charges, with officials citing figures around 70% for “criminal convictions or pending charges” [6], while independent researchers using ICE datasets and Freedom of Information/extracted agency files counter that the detained population is majority non‑convicted immigration violators [2][4][3]. The divergence stems from definitional choices (counting pending charges, counting prior non‑violent convictions, including foreign convictions or Interpol notices) and from which cohorts are counted (people arrested by ICE in the interior versus those arrested at the border by CBP) [5][6].
5. Bottom line and limits of available data
Bottom line: the best publicly reported analyses put the share of ICE arrests that involved people convicted of violent crimes in the low single digits to high single digits (roughly 3–9%) while a plurality or majority of ICE arrests and recent detention growth are composed of people with no U.S. criminal convictions or who were detained for immigration offenses such as reentry, though the exact percentage attributable solely to “illegal reentry” is not broken out consistently in the available public summaries [1][2][3][4][5].