How many ICE removals in 2025 and 2026 were of individuals with felony convictions versus immigration violations?
Executive summary
Publicly available reporting and datasets do not produce a single, definitive national tally that cleanly separates “removals of people with felony convictions” from “removals for immigration violations” for calendar years 2025 and 2026; independent analysts and advocacy groups using overlapping ICE data arrive at very different pictures—some showing most removals involve non‑criminal immigration violations, others emphasizing a majority with criminal histories—so any numeric answer must be presented as an estimate built from competing sources rather than a settled fact [1] [2] [3].
1. What the official ICE dashboards publish — and what they do not
ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations dashboards disclose arrests, removals and categorizations (convicted, pending charge, or immigration violator), but the agency’s public dashboards are updated quarterly and have coding changes and gaps that obscure precise counts by charge severity (e.g., felony v. misdemeanor) and by fiscal versus calendar year, meaning the dashboards are an imperfect basis for a single national “2025 vs 2026” split [4] [5].
2. Independent tallies and a range of estimates for 2025
Independent analysts diverge: the Cato Institute’s review of leaked ICE data reported that in November 2025 about 70 percent of people ICE deported had no criminal conviction and that, through that period, ICE had removed “barely 90,000 individuals with criminal convictions” and fewer than 150,000 with convictions or pending charges overall—figures Cato used to argue most removals were of nonconvicted immigrants rather than violent criminals [1]. By contrast, Migration Policy Institute’s pre‑2025 analysis found that 79 percent of interior removals in FY2021–24 involved people with criminal convictions, a different baseline that complicates year‑to‑year comparisons [3]. Those two anchors imply very different shares for 2025 removals depending on which dataset and time window one accepts [1] [3].
3. Regional data and reporting that complicates a national count
Local reporting shows important regional variation: Dallas reporting found the majority arrested by the Dallas ICE field office in 2025 lacked criminal convictions and that arrests of people with pending charges rose sharply, while Honolulu counts through mid‑October 2025 showed 66 detainees with prior criminal convictions versus 121 detained for alleged immigration violations in that facility’s booking data—illustrating that local mixes of criminal versus immigration grounds differ and cannot be extrapolated to a single national number without assumptions [6] [7].
4. Contradictory official and political claims
Federal officials and political statements further muddy the numeric picture: a DHS press summary in January 2026 claimed “70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or charged” and highlighted high‑profile criminal removals, a claim that directly conflicts with independent analysts’ findings that the majority of removals in much of 2025 were of people without criminal convictions [8] [1]. These divergent narratives reflect competing institutional agendas—DHS emphasizing public‑safety removals, researchers and advocates documenting large numbers detained or removed for immigration violations alone [8] [2].
5. Best available short answer and limits of confidence
Using the provided sources, a precise national count for calendar‑year 2025 and partial 2026 removals split by “felony convictions” versus “immigration violations” cannot be produced with high confidence: leaked ICE/Cato analysis suggests roughly 30 percent of removals in late‑2025 involved people with criminal convictions while roughly 70 percent did not [1], whereas other analyses and official historical baselines place a much higher convicted share (up to ~79% for interior removals across 2021–24) [3]. TRAC reported 56,392 removals posted for FY2026 as of their posting, but did not provide a nationwide felony‑v‑immigration split that the sources reliably reconcile for calendar 2025 and 2026 [9]. Reporters and researchers must therefore treat any single percentage or raw count as provisional until ICE’s public dashboards are reconciled, audited, and expanded to show felony‑level breakdowns and consistent time frames [4] [5].
6. Takeaway for readers and next steps for verification
The most defensible conclusion from the sources is that the composition of removals shifted in 2025 toward a larger share of people without criminal convictions in many places, but that national-level estimates vary widely depending on definitions, time windows and data corrections; anyone seeking a definitive numeric split should consult ICE’s quarterly ERO dashboards and independent reconciliations from TRAC, Cato, and Migration Policy Institute while being mindful of local variations and changing ICE coding practices [4] [9] [1] [3].