Over 40% of All Migrants Arrested In The First Weeks Of February Didn't Have Criminal Charges

The Trump administration emphasized the first phase of its mass deportation operations would focus on migrants facing criminal charges as it would prioritize the "worst." However, new data shows that a significant portion of the latest that have been targeted have no criminal conviction or criminal charges whatsoever.

According to new data analyzed by NBC News, 4,422 new migrants have been taken into custody in the first two weeks of February. From that number, the portion with no criminal conviction or pending criminal charges increased by more than 1,800 people, representing 41% of the total detainees.

By comparison, during the fiscal year 2024, the Biden administration made 113,431 immigration arrests, and, of those, 28% were of people who had no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

Conversely, the total number of detainees with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges arrested by ICE and currently in detention also rose over the last two weeks, going up 18% in the last two weeks, from about 14,000 to more than 16,500.

The new detainees are overwhelmingly male, a consistent trend, according to NBC News. 22 female detainees were booked over the last two weeks, according to the data: 11 with criminal convictions or charges, and 11 without.

When asked for comment on the data by the news outlet, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland security spokeswoman, said immigrants without criminal records are often "far from innocent" but declined to provide further data.

Further, the new detention data shows that its detention centers are at the upper limits of their capacity. The number of people detained went from 39,238 in early February to 41,169 in mid-February. ICE's detention capacity nationwide is 41,500, according to NBC. It's unclear how many people who had been in detention were deported or were released through the Alternatives to Detention monitoring program during these two weeks.

The new data comes after the administration has been strongly pushing the rhetoric that all undocumented migrants are criminals, a false claim.

In her first White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt falsely labeled all migrants arrested for suspicion of being in the country unlawfully as "criminals." But the truth is that being in the country unauthorized is a civil violation, not a criminal one, and the individuals who were arrested have not been convicted of a crime.

Asked by a reporter how many of the, at the time 3,500, immigrants arrested in the Trump administration have criminal records, Leavitt said, "all of them because they illegally broke our nation's laws."

"I know the last administration didn't see it that way, so it's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that's exactly what they are," she said.

Less than 0.5% of the 1.8 million cases in immigration courts during the past fiscal year— involving about 8,400 people— included deportation orders for alleged crimes other than entering the U.S. illegally, an Axios review of government data found.