Of the immigrants who have been deported under trumps administration, how many of them were violent criminals with a record
Executive summary
Publicly available reporting and leaked ICE datasets point to a clear conclusion: only a small share of people deported under President Trump’s second-term enforcement surge had violent criminal convictions, and independent analysts estimate that the vast majority did not — though the exact count is uncertain because official, detailed DHS breakdowns remain limited [1] [2] [3]. Using the most-cited figures and noting mismatched timeframes produces a plausible order‑of‑magnitude estimate in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, of deportees with violent convictions — with major caveats about data sources and definitions [1] [4] [3].
1. The central numbers reporters lean on and what they actually show
Nonpublic ICE data shared with the Cato Institute indicated that 93 percent of people ICE detained had no violent convictions, which implies roughly 7 percent did, a share echoed by a Deportation Data Project analysis that found the proportion of deportees with violent convictions fell to about 7 percent in the January–June 2025 window [1]. The New York Times’ federal-data analysis counted roughly 230,000 interior arrests and about 270,000 border removals in the first year of the administration, and reported that deportations of people with violent convictions rose in rate but that deportations of people with no criminal record rose far more sharply [4].
2. Converting percentages to a head‑count: a tentative calculation
If one uses the DHS headline deportation totals cited publicly (roughly 605,000–622,000 removals reported by DHS) as the denominator and applies the ~7 percent figure for violent convictions from the Cato/Deportation Data Project reporting, the arithmetic yields an approximate count on the order of 40,000–44,000 deportees with violent convictions — but that is a rough back‑of‑the‑envelope estimate because the DHS total and the Cato/Deportation Data Project share different scopes and timeframes and DHS has not published a transparent, itemized dataset to confirm the match [3] [1] [4].
3. Why these numbers are contested: different definitions and incomplete transparency
DHS and ICE have repeatedly touted “removing the worst of the worst” and released aggregate removal totals and selective enforcement tallies [5] [6], while independent outlets and analysts highlight that a large share of people detained or deported lacked convictions: AP found 71.7 percent of ICE detainees had no criminal convictions as of late June data, and 60 Minutes and Cato investigators reported that many named deportees lacked documented U.S. or foreign criminal charges [2] [1]. These discrepancies stem from different counting rules (e.g., detentions vs removals vs expulsions, inclusion of pending charges, inclusion of voluntary “self‑deportations”), and from DHS withholding the once‑routine detailed statistical tables that would allow apples‑to‑apples comparisons [4] [7].
4. Competing narratives and possible incentives shaping the numbers
The administration’s public messaging emphasizes large totals and “violent offenders” to justify aggressive interior enforcement and self‑deportation mechanisms [5] [3], while independent think tanks and news investigations stress the high share of non‑criminal deportees to argue the policy is sweeping up people without violent records [1] [2]. Leaks to Cato and reporting by outlets like the New York Times and AP are indispensable precisely because of limited transparent DHS releases; that dynamic creates incentives on both sides to frame partial data in ways that bolster policy aims or critiques [1] [4] [2].
5. Bottom line, with limits of the available evidence
There is robust, repeated reporting that only a small minority of deportees had violent convictions — commonly cited at about 7 percent in independent analyses — which, when applied to DHS headline totals, suggests tens of thousands (not the majority) of deportees were convicted of violent crimes, but the exact national count cannot be pinned down from the public record because DHS has not provided the detailed, consistent datasets needed to reconcile totals, definitions and time periods [1] [3] [4]. Independent alternatives to the administration’s framing exist across multiple reputable sources, and readers should treat any single headline total without its methodological appendices as incomplete [2] [1].