What percentage of deported illegal immigrants were criminals or pending criminal charges
Executive summary
The short answer is: it depends on which dataset and timeframe is used. For interior removals in recent years, a large majority of deportees had criminal convictions, but ICE detention and recent-deportation data from 2025–2026 show that a substantial—and in some snapshots a clear majority—had no U.S. criminal conviction or pending charge [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Why one number doesn’t fit all: different definitions and datasets
“Deported” can mean different things (interior removals, border returns, voluntary departures), and agencies classify criminality differently—U.S. convictions, pending charges, prior foreign convictions, or immigration-related violations—so any percentage hinges on which population and which definition are used; ICE’s public categories explicitly separate those with convictions, those with pending charges, and those with no convictions or pending charges even if they violated immigration law [5].
2. Interior removals: the statistic often cited for ‘criminal deportees’
When focusing on interior removals—noncitizens arrested inside the United States after contact with the criminal justice system—researchers found that 79 percent of ICE deportations from the interior in FY2021–24 were of people with a criminal conviction, a clear majority that reflects the criminal-justice pipeline into immigration enforcement [1].
3. The contrasting picture in ICE detention and recent deportation snapshots
By late 2025 and into January 2026, multiple analyses of ICE detention and arrest data show the opposite pattern for the people being arrested and held: TRAC reported that 74.2 percent of people in ICE detention as of January 25, 2026 had no criminal conviction [2], and Cato’s analysis of ICE data found that in November 2025 about 70 percent of those ICE deported had no criminal conviction and 43 percent had neither conviction nor charge [3]. FactCheck.org’s read of Deportation Data Project numbers found that in January 2026 only roughly 29 percent of those detained by ICE had criminal convictions, down from about 64 percent in December 2024 [4].
4. How timing, operational shifts, and priorities changed the mix
Those differences align with documented operational shifts: analyses show a surge in arrests of people with no criminal records during 2025 driven by expanded at-large arrests, workplace operations, and re-arrests around check-ins and court appearances, which pushed up detention totals even as the share with convictions fell [6] [7]. Academics tracking single-day detention growth concluded much of the increase was composed of people without convictions [7].
5. Official messaging vs. independent data: competing narratives
The Department of Homeland Security and political leaders have framed enforcement as targeting “criminal illegal aliens,” with DHS press releases emphasizing arrests and removals of violent offenders [8]. Independent researchers, university projects like the Deportation Data Project, TRAC, Cato, and advocacy groups have published internal-data analyses and FOIA-derived numbers that complicate that narrative—showing large shares without U.S. criminal convictions and highlighting limits in transparency about foreign convictions or charges [3] [2] [4].
6. Limits and what remains unclear
Available public data do not uniformly capture foreign criminal records, the distinction between convictions and pending charges across jurisdictions, or the breakdown of “deported” by type (border vs interior vs voluntary), so precise single-number answers for “what percentage of deported illegal immigrants were criminals or pending criminal charges” are not possible from public sources alone; instead, the evidence supports a conditional conclusion: interior removals in FY2021–24 skew heavily toward people with convictions (about 79 percent), while recent ICE detention and deportation activity in late 2025–early 2026 shows a majority without U.S. convictions [1] [2] [3] [4].