Trump says he wants to deport ‘the worst of the worst.’ Government data tell another story
President Trump promised to deport “the worst of the worst”. Unidentified “dangerous criminals” – murderers, rapists and child predators – talk about public appearances and said that he entered the USA illegally under the rule of Biden from all over the world. It promises to expel millions of immigrants in the biggest deportation program in American history to protect the citizens who follow the law from the threats of violence.
However, the government data around the ongoing observations tells a different story.
Since Trump began his second period, there has been an increase in the arrests of the US immigration and Customs Protection and with dominant reports throughout the country. Nevertheless, the majority of people who are currently detained by ICE have no criminal conviction. Among those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes-a definite contrast to the creepy nightmare of Trump to support the border security agenda.
“There is a deep disconnection between the rhetoric and the truth, Ah Ahilan Arulantham, the joint fiction director of the Migration Law and Policy Center of UCLA Law, said. “This administration and also under the previous Trump administration, they constantly go after the worst of the worst, and only about immigration sanction, they claim that they are about to go after a comprehensive, dangerous people with comprehensive criminal backgrounds.
A look at numbers
The latest ice statistics show that 57,861 people detained by ICE as of June 29, 41.495 -71.7% of 71.7% are not criminal conviction. This includes 14.318 persons with waiting criminal charges and 27,177 persons subject to immigration practices but do not have known criminal convictions or waiting criminal charges.
Each prisoner is given a threat level with ice on 1 to 3 scale and one is highest. Those who do not have criminal records are classified as “no ice threat level”. As of June 23, the latest data existing data was not given a threat to 84% of the people who were detained at the 201 facility throughout the country. Another 7% was rated as a threat of level 1, 4% was level 2 and 5% level.
Brennan Justice Center Justice Program Senior Director Lauren-Brooke Eisen, “President Trump, immigrants created a crime of violence in the United States, and this is not just true, not correct, the wrong claims,” he said. “There is no research and evidence that supports his claims.”
Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior Security, Ticia McLaughlin said that ICE did not target “fake” with the migrants of the migrants and that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem led ICE to target the worst, including gang members, killers and rapists ”. In addition to convictions, the prisoners, as well as the charges of waiting as “criminal illegal aliens” counted.
The public data obtained by the CATO Institute shows that 65% of more than 204,000 people as of June 14 have been processed in the system processed by ICE since the beginning of 2025, which started on October 1, 2024. While only 6.9% of the convictions were committed to a violent crime, 53% of them committed non -violent crimes, which were in three main categories: migration, traffic or auxiliary crimes.
White House Deputy General Manager Stephen Miller, agency Trump in the first five months of the second period of 650 per day 3,000 arrest quota per day after the total ice arrests rose at the end of May. According to the cleaning house, ICE arrested about 30% more people in April in May. This number increased by 28%again in June.
Between February 8 and May 17, the CATO Institute found that the daily average of the “non -innocent” daily average ranged from 421 to 454. At the end of May, this number rose to 678 in the next two weeks and then rose to 927 from June 1 to June 14.
Eisen said, “What you see is this big increase in financing to detain people, to remove people, to force the laws of immigration,” Eisen said. “And what we see… These are not dangerous people.”
Focus on dangerous criminals
A White House spokesman Abigail Jackson said that the administration focuses on the root of non -criminal offensive criminals in the country.
“This week, the administration carried out a successful operation that saved children from the exploitation of labor in a cannabis facility in California, and continued to arrest the worst, including killers, pedophiles, gang members and rapists,” he wrote. “Any suggestion that the administration has not focused on these dangerous criminals is wrong.”
During his campaign, Trump emphasized several cases where immigrants in the country were illegally arrested for terrible crimes. Among them: The murder of 22 -year -old Lake Riley, a Georgian nursing student who was killed by a Venezuela man in the United States last year. Jose Ibarra was found guilty of murder and other crimes in the murder of Riley in February 2024 and was sentenced to prison without the possibility of conditional evacuation. Ibarra is looking for a new trial.
In January, Trump leaned against the Riley Law, which required the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes.
Immigrants do not use violent crime
However, research has constantly found that immigrants did not create a crime of violence in the United States and actually committed less crimes than indigenous Americans. For example, a 2023 working certificate from the National Economic Research Bureau reported that immigrants have lower imprisonment rates than those born in the United States for 150 years, and that the probability of imprisonment of 60% of immigrants is lower.
Experts say that the fake rhetoric from the Trump administration is real damage.
Arlanantham said, “People in the immigrant communities make them feel targeted and marginalized,” Arulantham said. “It creates more political and social space for all kinds of hatred, including hate crime against immigrant communities.”
Eisen, the effect has spread to other communities, he said.
“All Americans should ask for safe and developing communities, and the idea that the President of the United States made misleading statements about the real and distortion reality is not the way to ensure public security,” he said.
Goldin writes for Associated Press.
