How many immigrants were deported in 2025 that actually had a criminal record?
Executive summary
Multiple official and investigative sources disagree about both the total number of removals in 2025 and the share of those removed who had criminal convictions, but the strongest contemporaneous datasets indicate that roughly 28–31% of deportees had criminal convictions—which, when combined with DHS’s own removal tallies, yields a mid‑year estimate in the low hundreds of thousands rather than a majority of deportees [1] [2] [3].
1. What the government counted in 2025: totals and competing tallies
The Department of Homeland Security issued public tallies claiming more than 605,000 deportations since January 20, 2025 in late‑year releases (a November/December DHS release cited "more than 605,000" removals) while earlier DHS material and other outlets reported lower but still large figures [1] [4]; independent press tracking using ICE's own datasets reported substantially different totals in some periods—for example The Guardian’s reporting counted nearly 327,000 deportations tied to the administration’s interior enforcement through a mid/late 2025 window [5].
2. How many deportees had criminal convictions: the direct data
ICE and independent analyses of ICE arrest/detention records show a sharp shift in the composition of detainees: The New York Times analysis of ICE arrest data found the share of detained people with criminal convictions fell to about 28% by mid‑October 2025, down from roughly 46% earlier in the year [2]. Independent researchers and think tanks using nonpublic ICE data reported consistent results—Cato Institute analysis showed that by November 2025 about 70% of those ICE deported had no criminal conviction, implying roughly 30% had convictions [3]. Migration Policy and other researchers also documented that a large majority of detainees in several months of 2025 had no criminal conviction, further supporting a lower share of deportees with criminal records [6] [7].
3. Translating shares into counts: two plausible calculation paths
If DHS's later claim of "more than 605,000" deportations for 2025 is used as the base and one applies contemporaneous independent shares indicating about 28–31% of deportees had convictions, that points to roughly 170,000–188,000 deportees with criminal convictions in 2025 [1] [2] [3]. If instead the lower figure reported and tracked by outlets such as The Guardian—"nearly 327,000" deportations in the same period—is used, the implied count of deportees with convictions falls to roughly 91,000–101,000 [5] [2]. Both calculations rest on pairing a total removals number with the contemporaneous measured share of deportees who had criminal convictions [1] [5] [2] [3].
4. Why the range is wide: conflicting sources and definitions
Part of the divergence arises from differences in counting (DHS press tallies versus ICE operational datasets reconstructed by journalists), timing (cumulative year totals versus snapshots through October/December), and definitions (ICE distinguishes convictions, pending charges, and immigration‑only offenses; some datasets treat immigration re‑entry or visa violations separately from criminal convictions) [8] [2] [9]. Reporting from TRAC and court records show that only a small share of new immigration court cases explicitly allege criminal activity, further complicating simple extrapolation from court activity to deportation composition [9].
5. Verdict and caveats
The best-anchored contemporary estimate from independent analyses of ICE data is that roughly 28–31% of 2025 deportees had criminal convictions; depending on which total deportation figure one pairs with that share, the count of deported people with criminal convictions in 2025 is approximately 90,000–190,000. This is a wide range because authoritative sources disagree on the total removals and because ICE reporting practices and seasonal timing changed markedly through 2025; the public record does not allow a single, precise integer without choosing which total to privilege [1] [5] [2] [3] [9].
6. What to watch next
Future clarity requires transparency from DHS/ICE about the same dataset that journalists and researchers used to calculate shares (how "criminal conviction" is coded, how immigration‑only removals are classified, and the final cumulative removal tally for FY 2025), and independent auditing of ICE’s internal tracking—absent that, policy debates will continue to hinge on contested arithmetic as much as on enforcement priorities [8] [2] [3].