U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to deport "the worst of the worst," yet the majority of people currently detained by immigration agents have no criminal convictions, according to government data regarding ongoing detentions.

As well, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes — a stark contrast to the chilling nightmare Trump describes to support his border security agenda.

The latest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7 per cent — of whom had no criminal convictions. That includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement, but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

"There's a deep disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality," said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-faculty director of the UCLA Law School's Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

Each detainee is assigned a threat level by ICE on a scale of 1 to 3, with one being the highest. Those without a criminal record are classified as having "no ICE threat level." As of June 23, the latest data available, 84 per cent of people detained at 201 facilities nationwide were not given a threat level. Another 7 per cent had been graded as a level 1 threat, 4 per cent were level 2 and 5 per cent were level 3.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said the administration is intensely focused on rooting out unvetted criminals who are in the country illegally.

"Just this week, the Administration conducted a successful operation rescuing children from labour exploitation at a marijuana facility in California, and continued arresting the worst of the worst — including murderers, pedophiles, gang members, and rapists," she wrote in an email. "Any suggestion that the Administration is not laser-focused on these dangerous criminals is flat out wrong."

Trump advisor sets arrest quotas

Nonpublic data obtained by the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute shows that as of June 14, 65 per cent of the more than 204,000 people processed into the system by ICE since the start of fiscal year 2025, which began Oct. 1, 2024, had no criminal convictions. Of those with convictions, only 6.9 per cent  had committed a violent crime, while 53 per cent had committed nonviolent crimes that fell into three main categories — immigration, traffic or vice crimes.

While most ICE detainees are not convicted criminals, there are detainees who have committed serious crimes. On Friday, the administration released information on five high-level offenders who had been arrested.

During his campaign, Trump referred to migrants as "vermin," and highlighted several cases where immigrants in the country illegally were arrested for horrific crimes.

In January, he signed into law the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes. The act is named after the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was slain last year by a Venezuelan man in the U.S. illegally.  

Research has consistently found, however, that immigrants are not driving violent crime in the U.S. and that they actually commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. A 2023 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, reported that immigrants for 150 years have had lower incarceration rates than those born in the U.S. In fact, the rates have declined since 1960 — according to the paper, immigrants were 60 per cent less likely to be incarcerated.

"President Trump has justified this immigration agenda in part by making false claims that migrants are driving violent crime in the United States, and that's just simply not true," said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "There's no research and evidence that supports his claims."

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Total ICE arrests shot up at the end of May after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave the agency a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump's second term. ICE arrested nearly 30 per cent more people in May than in April, according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, or TRAC. That number rose again in June, by another 28 per cent. 

Experts say the false rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration creates real harm.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the recent wave of immigration enforcement has been driven by an "arbitrary arrest quota" and based on "broad stereotypes based on race or ethnicity." 

Farm raid turns deadly

Immigrants and Latino communities across Southern California have been on edge for weeks since the Trump administration stepped up arrests at car washes, Home Depot parking lots, immigration courts and a range of businesses. Tens of thousands of people have participated in rallies in the region over the raids and the subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines to the Los Angeles area.

A farmworker who fell from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic ICE raid this week at a California cannabis facility died Saturday of his injuries, becoming the first known person to die during one of the Trump administration's ongoing immigration enforcement operations. Yesenia Duran, the niece of Jaime Alanis, 57, confirmed Alanis's death to The Associated Press.

The Department of Homeland Security said it executed criminal search warrants Thursday at Glass House Farms facilities in Camarillo and Carpinteria. Glass House is a licensed cannabis grower. The farm in Camarillo also grows tomatoes and cucumbers.

Alanis called family to say he was hiding and possibly was fleeing agents before he fell about nine metres from the roof and broke his neck, according to information from family, hospital and government sources.

Agents arrested some 200 people suspected of being in the country illegally, DHS said in a statement. Alanis was not among them, the agency said.

During the raid crowds of people gathered outside the facility in Camarillo to seek information about their relatives and protest immigration enforcement. Authorities clad in military-style helmets and uniforms faced off with the demonstrators, and people ultimately retreated amid acrid green and white billowing smoke.

Four U.S. citizens were arrested during the incident for allegedly "assaulting or resisting officers," according to DHS, and authorities were offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a person suspected of firing a gun at federal agents.