Seventy-three percent of people recently booked by ICE have no criminal history.
Let’s re-read that a different way.
Less than THIRTY percent of people booked by ICE from October to mid-November had a criminal history.
Only five percent of people booked by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) recently had a violent criminal conviction. Most of the 27% of those picked up by ICE with criminal convictions were found guilty of victimless crimes, such as traffic violations, drug use, or immigration-related matters.
Since he got inaugurated, President Trump and his administration have touted that American communities are being rid of ‘threats to public safety’ – announcing that killers, rapists, gangbangers, and other violent criminals will “find no safe harbor.”
But the reality is far from this. Thousands are being picked up by ICE every day, and instead of violent criminals they are grandmothers, high school students, nursing mothers, and children.
In fact, when it comes to children being detained, the Trump administration has itself admitted that it is breaking the law.
The Flores Settlement Agreement sets national standards for how the U.S. government may detain, release, and treat immigrant children in federal immigration custody. According to the 1997 Agreement, the federal government, regardless of which party is in power, must generally release minors within 20 days of detaining them.
An ICE report released this December by the Administration indicated that about 400 immigrant children were held in ICE detention centers for longer than the legal limit, and a few of those cases were extreme – with five children being held for 168 days earlier this year.
There is no doubt that the numbers of people being detained have grown. In January 2025 when Trump returned to the White House there were 39,000 detainees in ICE custody. By late August there were 61,000 in ICE custody, and it is anticipated that by January 2026 there will be 107,000 in ICE custody.
There are so many costs to these detainments. Around 4.2 million people live in a mixed-status family that contains an undocumented spouse of a U.S. citizen, and these detentions are causing extreme economical and emotional harm to these mixed-status families. People with no criminal history are living in fear every day that they will be picked up to meet the quota for ICE daily bookings.
When it comes to the economical cost, the federal government is set to spend 62% more on ICE than its own federal prison system.
There is no simple way to conclude a discussion of this nature. However, one point is unmistakable: elected officials must be held accountable for the detention of thousands of individuals, including those with U.S. citizen spouses, children, and parents, and those for whom the United States has been the only home they have known for most of their lives.
