The Trump administration is now under fire for missing their mark under Kristi Noem and Donald Trump’s leadership to deport the worst of the worst criminals.
75% of ICE detainees have had no criminal background, contradicting the United States’ plan to deport these ‘vicious illegal aliens’ our government so bad wants us to believe in.
It’s hard not to feel a twinge of déjà vu when you scroll through the headlines these days.
Back in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump thundered about rounding up “millions and millions of criminal aliens,” painting a picture of a nation under siege by dangerous fugitives slipping through the cracks.
Fast-forward to late 2025, and that promise feels like it’s echoing in an empty warehouse—except the warehouse is packed with people who, by most measures, aren’t the threats he had in mind.
Newly leaked figures from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paint a stark picture: The massive deportation push under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is sweeping up far more garden-variety immigrants than the “worst of the worst” her boss vowed to target.
It’s the kind of disconnect that makes you wonder if the folks in charge are reading the same script as the rest of us.
Details of the Findings
The numbers, first obtained by the libertarian Cato Institute and corroborated by multiple independent datasets, show that since the start of the fiscal year on October 1, a whopping 73 percent of people booked into ICE custody had no criminal conviction at all.
Nearly half of those detained—48 percent—didn’t even have pending charges on their records.
And get this: Only 5 percent involved individuals with a violent criminal conviction.
For context, ICE has been detaining almost as many people for straightforward immigration offenses like illegal entry or re-entry as it has for violent crimes.
That’s not a scalpel; that’s a sledgehammer.
David Bier, the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies, didn’t mince words when he broke down the implications.
“President Trump’s deportation agenda does not match the campaign promises that he made, nor the rhetoric from his officials,” Bier said.
“The agenda is taking resources away from targeting true public safety threats, whether from immigrants or Americans. ICE should redirect its resources back toward serious public safety threats.”
It’s a blunt assessment from a think tank not exactly known for pulling punches on border policy, and it lands like a gut punch amid the administration’s chest-thumping.
This isn’t some isolated snapshot. Dive deeper into the data, and the trends get even more revealing.
UC Berkeley Backs This Data Up
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release analyzed by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law and UCLA School of Law found that by late July, 67 percent of ICE arrests targeted people without any criminal convictions.
Nearly 40 percent had neither convictions nor charges.
Compare that to the Biden era, where just one in 10 arrests involved folks with no criminal history.
The shift is dizzying: Arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions have ballooned 571 percent since January, while those with no conviction and no charge at all have surged 1,500 percent.
ICE’s own public detention dashboard, updated through mid-November, tells a similar story.
By then, 69 percent of detainees arrested directly by ICE officers had no criminal conviction, and 40 percent had no charges whatsoever.
The share of people held after an ICE arrest who do have criminal convictions has plummeted from 62 percent in January to just 31 percent now.
Meanwhile, those with convictions but no pending charges exploded from fewer than 1,000 in January to more than 21,000—a staggering 2,370 percent jump. And on the deportation side?
In November 2025 alone, 70 percent of removals involved no criminal convictions, with 43 percent lacking either a conviction or a pending charge.
This isn’t a ‘Blue Vs. Red’ partisan fight — Americans are being lied to.
To understand how this all ramped up, you have to rewind a bit. The real pivot came after April 26, 2025, when the White House doubled down on mass detentions as part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown.
Cato’s analysis shows that 80 percent of the surge in daily ICE book-ins since October has come from people with zero criminal records.
It’s like the operation hit a quota-filling gear, prioritizing volume over precision.
The Dark Side of Politics: Control the Narrative at All Costs
Noem, who’s earned the not-so-flattering nickname “ICE Barbie” for her photogenic raids and tough-talk stunts, has been front and center in selling this as a win for public safety.
Alongside acting ICE head Todd Lyons and U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, she’s repeatedly vowed to zero in on the “worst of the worst.”
Noem even took to X recently to highlight a 1,153 percent spike in assaults on ICE agents between January 21 and November 21—from 19 incidents last year to 238 this time around.
“President Trump and I will always stand with the men and women of [@ICEgov] who risk their lives every single day to arrest the worst of the worst,” she posted.
It’s a rallying cry meant to underscore the dangers agents face, but critics argue it’s a deflection from the core issue: If the raids are so laser-focused on threats, why are the numbers telling a different story?
Bovino, in particular, admitted of lying to a court about an incident that never happened, leading to the tear gassing of peaceful protestors, including children — talk about a power trip.
The Chicago-based commander, who’s led operations in hotspots like Charlotte, North Carolina, fired back at detractors on X after CBS News reported on local Border Patrol arrests.
Only about one-third of those nabbed during Trump’s high-profile “Green Army” deployment in Charlotte involved people with criminal histories, according to the network’s documents.
A DHS spokesperson dismissed the figures as “likely inaccurate” but offered no alternative breakdown to set the record straight.
Bovino’s response?
He lashed out, insisting that “many immigration offenses are felonies and should be counted. Traffic offenses such as DWI sure as hell count. Thousands of dead Americans [pay] attention to that. You know, the dead Americans you ignore while you’re busy choosing illegal aliens over US citizens.”
It’s raw, frustrated—and telling. Bovino’s track record adds another layer of skepticism; earlier this year, a judge declared him a liar after he falsely claimed he’d been hit in the head with a rock before ordering tear gas on protesters, effectively sidelining him from related court matters.
These aren’t just abstract stats; they’re playing out in real communities.
Take Charlotte: Bovino’s own Thanksgiving-week “hometown mission” there raised eyebrows, blending family time with enforcement ops in a way that felt more performative than productive.
And as Bier points out, every resource poured into detaining non-criminals is a resource pulled from chasing actual dangers—immigrant or otherwise.
Silence From the Administration on the Real Data
In a country still grappling with opioid deaths and urban violence, that misallocation stings.
The administration’s silence on the leaks speaks volumes.
The Daily Beast reports that it reached out to DHS and the White House for comment, but as of this time, there has been no response.
Noem has shifted to touting those assault stats after months of vague percentages, but the underlying data she shared doesn’t address the elephant in the room: a deportation dragnet that’s as broad as it is bruising.
As Thanksgiving leftovers gather dust and Black Friday sales kick off, it’s worth pausing to ask—what if the real story here isn’t about borders, but about priorities?
Trump’s team came in swinging with promises of surgical strikes against crime.
Instead, the evidence suggests a blunt instrument, one that’s exhausting agents, alienating allies, and leaving the biggest threats to roam.
If this is the “worst of the worst,” we might need a new dictionary.
Meanwhile, economists are warning about the real U.S. economy troubles due to these immigration crackdowns.
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
