Detentions of immigrants without criminal histories have risen sharply since May amid a broader push to expand immigration enforcement, according to a CBS News analysis of data from the Department of Homeland Security.
White House adviser Stephen Miller announced a push for a new, higher target of 3,000 arrests daily in late May. From the first week of May to the first week of June, new ICE detentions of people facing only civil immigration charges, such as entering the country without authorization, rose by over 250%.
President Trump has repeatedly said his administration is focusing deportation efforts on criminals. Until recently, federal agents working to enforce his orders have detained more immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges than those without them each week, the data shows.
But even among those with criminal convictions — about 40% of detainees since Jan. 20 — the majority were not for violent offenses. Overall, roughly 8% of all detainees had been convicted of violent crimes, CBS News found.
“What we’re doing is we’re really going after the criminal aliens, of which we have plenty to work with,” Mr. Trump said at an event promoting his legislative package on Thursday. At a White House news conference with the president Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked about enforcement and said, “The violent criminals in our country are the priority now.”
However, top White House officials, including “border czar” Tom Homan, have also said anyone who entered the country illegally could face removal.
Homan told CBS News in May that while ICE would prioritize public safety and national security threats, “If you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table,” adding, “It’s a violation of law to enter this country illegally.”
More than 97,000 people have been detained over Mr. Trump’s first five months in office, CBS News’ analysis found, while ICE arrests, which do not always result in detentions, topped 100,000 earlier this month.
A record 59,000 people were currently being held in ICE detention as of June 23 — nearly half of them with no criminal record, CBS News reported last week.
The data CBS News analyzed for this report comes from ICE and was released to the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers who collect and publish immigration data. The group sued to obtain the data after filing a Freedom of Information Act request.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
Since the first week of June, the number detained with only civil immigration charges was double that of individuals with criminal convictions. This represents an abrupt reversal from the first four months of Mr. Trump’s second term, when the number of immigration detainees with a criminal record outnumbered those detained on civil immigration charges.
The new target of 3,000 daily arrests announced by Miller is a sharp increase from the the 660 daily arrests made on average during Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office.
Out of the more than 97,700 people ICE has detained since Mr. Trump took office, more than 39,500, or about 40%, had criminal convictions. Of those, nearly 23,000 were removed as of mid-June.
Among those with criminal convictions, about 8,200 — 8.4% — had convictions for violent crimes, including 478 convicted of homicide and about 6,800 convicted of assault or sexual assault. Violent offenses, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, include crimes that are “threatening, attempting, or actually using physical force against a person.”
Additionally, about 5,000 had drug-related convictions.
Traffic-related offenses made up the largest category of crimes among those with prior convictions, with driving under the influence of alcohol the single most common violation.
In an interview with CBS News’s Major Garrett in May, Homan blamed “sanctuary city” policies for leading to more arrests of those without criminal convictions.
“When sanctuary cities force us into the neighborhood to find that bad guy, many times that person is with others that are illegally in the country but may not be a criminal target,” he said. “Well, they’re going to go too.”
Homan has called these “collateral arrests.”
People without criminal convictions are also easier targets for removal, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. That’s because they tend to be easier to find and more concentrated in one place, he added.
“It requires significantly more resources to go after one person who may be armed and dangerous as opposed to going outside a Home Depot and trying to gather a larger number of people,” he told CBS News.
A CBS News poll completed in early June indicates that mass deportation of non-criminals is unpopular among Americans. The poll found that Americans who believe Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts are focused on dangerous criminals support those efforts. But among those who do not think criminals were the focus, support dropped dramatically.
Heightened ICE activity has sparked protests across the country in recent weeks, especially in Los Angeles, where Mr. Trump called in the National Guard in response.
California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the administration of “indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.”
Some Republican elected officials have also expressed concern. Six GOP members of Congress wrote a letter to ICE acting director Todd Lyons requesting that ICE reveal how many convicted criminals have been deported since January.
“Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives,” they wrote.
Ruiz Soto, of the Migration Policy Institute, told CBS News that based on Homan’s statements on immigration enforcement, he isn’t surprised that detentions are predominantly non-criminals.
“There’s been a disconnect from the beginning about the rhetoric from President Trump that seems to emphasize a focus on violent and the ‘worst of the worst’ criminals compared to what his cabinet and DHS has been saying from Day One,” he said. “When you look at the numbers it’s very clear that has not been the case since the beginning.”