74% of immigrants detained in the US have no convictions

“Democrats opened our borders and allowed violent criminals, including murderers, rapists, gang members and terrorists, to invade our communities,” said Karoline Leavitt, in an official statement from the White House this Wednesday (4).

The speech was released on the same day that the Donald Trump administration celebrated the milestone of more than 4 thousand arrests of “criminal illegal immigrants” in Minnesota, a state governed by Democrats and the central target of the so-called “Operation Metro Surge”, conducted by ICE, the immigration agency linked to the United States Department of Homeland Security.

Official numbers, however, tell a different story. Data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that by the end of 2025, about 74% of immigrants held in ICE detention centers had no criminal convictions on record in the United States.

The TRAC survey indicates that, as of November 30, 2025, 65,735 people were in ICE custody in the United States. Of this total, 48,377 had no registered criminal conviction, equivalent to 73.6% of the detained population.

In an update published in January 2026, the percentage rose slightly to 74.2%, or 70,766 detainees without criminal convictions.

The contrast is evident. While the White House maintains that federal operations target “murderers, rapists, gang members and terrorists,” official records show that the majority of people held in detention centers do not have criminal convictions in the country.

The language adopted in official statements reinforces a pattern that has accompanied Trump’s speech since the beginning of his political career.

In 2015, when launching his candidacy for President, he stated that Mexican immigrants “are bringing drugs, they are bringing crime, they are rapists”. Over the next few years, he again associated irregular immigration with “sexual predators,” “murderers” and “gang members” when advocating tougher border policies.

In recent weeks, the tightening of enforcement in Minnesota has been presented as a response to an alleged escalation of violence associated with illegal aliens.

In another public statement, the government spokeswoman described federal agents as “doing everything in their power to remove these heinous individuals and make our communities safer” while commenting on criticism of ICE operations.

The discourse has also used specific cases of women murdered by immigrants to support the need to reinforce detentions and deportations.

When mentioning these episodes, federal authorities associate migratory actions with the protection of family and community, an argument frequently mobilized by conservative and reactionary sectors of North American society that defend greater police presence and tougher penalties.

In this scenario, migration policy became one of the central axes of mobilization of the republican base.

The emphasis on prisons, operations concentrated in states governed by Democrats and confrontational language speaks to an electorate that demands public demonstrations of rigor.

The numbers on criminal convictions do not change this strategy, but they help to measure the real profile of the people reached by the operations.