Has ICE deported only violent criminals like they said or have they deported indiscriminately

1. What official data say and what “criminality” categories mean

ICE’s public statistics classify removals and arrests by broad criminality categories — including people with convictions for violent crimes, nonviolent crimes, and those with no convictions but removable for immigration reasons such as reentry or overstays — and ICE’s materials explicitly note that a large category includes people without convictions ^[3]. DHS-wide counts show that ICE is a major actor in interior removals, with ICE responsible for an average of about 146,000 deportations annually in recent years, underscoring the scale at which these classification choices matter ^[4].

2. Independent analyses: large shares without violent convictions

Independent researchers who have obtained ICE data — notably the Deportation Data Project and reporting outlets that analyzed FOIA or leaked datasets — document that a majority of those arrested or removed in recent enforcement waves had no criminal convictions, and that violent convictions account for a small share of removals. The Marshall Project found that two-thirds of more than 120,000 people deported between January and May had no criminal convictions at all, with only roughly 12 percent convicted of violent or potentially violent crimes ^[1]. Analyses cited by Cato and others show similar patterns: a large share of detainees lacked convictions and the proportion with violent convictions was very small in some datasets ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Patterns, priorities, and claims of indiscriminate enforcement

Multiple civil society and research organizations conclude recent enforcement practices have broadened beyond a narrow focus on “the worst of the worst,” documenting spikes in arrests of people whose most serious offenses are traffic violations, minor drug offenses, or immigration-only violations like illegal reentry ^{[1] [7]}. Prison Policy’s analysis of ICE-provided data described high volumes of arrests concentrated where local collaboration enabled them, and warned that interior enforcement increasingly relied on local jails and administrative pathways rather than only courtroom adjudication ^[7]. These findings support the characterization by several outlets that enforcement has been expansive and has swept in many nonviolent or nonconvicted people ^{[1] [7]}.

4. Limits of the record and alternative interpretations

ICE and DHS maintain that enforcement is targeted at public-safety threats and point to their criminality categories and operational priorities as evidence of triage ^{[3] [4]}. At the same time, the Government Accountability Office has highlighted weaknesses in ICE’s public reporting that can understate total detentions and complicate trend analysis, meaning public-facing tallies can obscure details that matter for assessing targeting claims ^[8]. Reporters and researchers using FOIA-obtained ICE datasets and the Deportation Data Project have filled gaps, but those datasets sometimes cover partial time windows or rely on internal ICE fields whose definitions and completeness vary ^{[2] [8]}. Where the public record is thin or definitions differ, this analysis notes the limitation rather than drawing unsupported conclusions.

5. Bottom line

The balance of independent data and investigative reporting indicates ICE has deported large numbers of people who were not violent criminals — and in many cases had no criminal conviction at all — even as agency messaging emphasizes prioritizing dangerous offenders ^{[1] [5] [3]}. The discrepancy stems partly from how “criminality” is categorized, agency priorities, and the reliance on local enforcement partnerships; oversight reports also show reporting gaps that make precise tallies difficult ^{[7] [8] [2]}.