Trump says he wants to expel “the worst of the worst”. Government data tells another story

President Trump is committed to expeling “the worst of the worst”. He frequently speaks during the public appearances of the countless “dangerous criminals” – among which murderers, rapists and children’s predators – from around the world, he said illegally in the United States under the Biden administration. He promises to expel millions of migrants in the largest expulsion program in American history to protect citizens respectful of laws against the violent threats he says.

But government data around current detentions tell a different story.

There has been an increase in arrests on the part of immigration and the application of American customs since Trump began his second term, with raid reports across the country. However, the majority of people currently owned by ice have no criminal conviction. Among those who do it, relatively little have been found guilty of high -level crimes – a striking contrast with the scary nightmare described by Trump to support his border security program.

“There is a profound disconnection between rhetoric and reality,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-faculty director of the center and politics of the Immigration Center for UCLA. “This administration, and also in the administration of anterior Trump, they constantly claim to go after the worst of the worst and talk about the application of immigration as if it were a question of pursuing violent and dangerous people with extensive criminal stories. And yet to an overwhelming majority, they are people who aim to be arrested who have no criminal history.”

A look at the figures

The latest ice statistics show that on June 29, 57,861 people owned by ice, 41,495, or 71.7%, including no criminal conviction. This includes 14,318 people with criminal accusations in the process and 27,177 who are subject to the application of immigration but have no known criminal conviction or pending criminal accusations.

Each detainee is awarded a level of threat by ice on a scale of 1 to 3, 1 being the highest. Those who do not have a criminal record are classified as “no threat level on ice”. As of June 23, the latest data available, 84% of people detained in 201 installations in the country did not receive a threat level. 7% additional had been classified as threat of level 1, 4% were level 2 and 5% were level 3.

“President Trump justified this immigration program in part by making false claims that migrants lead to violent crimes in the United States, and that is simply not true,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, principal director of the justice program at Brennan Center for Justice. “There is no research and evidence that supports its claims.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Ministry of Internal Security, described the assessment that the ice does not target immigrants with a “false” criminal record and declared that the secretary of domestic security Kristi Noem ordered the ice of “targeting the worst of the worst – including gang members, murderers and rapists”. She counted prisoners with convictions, as well as those who have pending charges, such as “illegal criminal foreigners”.

The non -public data obtained by the Cato Institute show that on June 14, 65% of the more than 204,000 people transformed into the system by ICE since the start of the 2025 fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2024, no criminal conviction. Among those who were convicted, only 6.9% had committed a violent crime, while 53% had committed non -violent crimes which fell into three main categories – immigration, traffic or vice -crimes.

Total ice arrests on the ice knew the end of May after the deputy chief of staff of the White House, Stephen Miller, gave the agency a quota of 3,000 arrests per day, against 650 per day during the first five months of Trump’s second term. Ice arrested almost 30% more people in May than in April, according to the Clearinghouse access to transactional files. This number has increased again in June, by an additional 28%.

The Cato Institute noted that from February 8 to May 17, the daily average of “non-criminals” transformed in the system varied from 421 to 454. In the following two weeks at the end of May, this number increased to 678 and then increased to 927 from June 1 to June 14.

“What you see is this enormous increase in funding to hold people, withdraw people, enforce immigration laws,” said Eisen. “And what we see is that … they are not dangerous people.”

Focus on dangerous criminals

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said the administration was intensely focused on the fainting of unrecovered criminals who are illegally in the country.

“This week, the administration carried out a successful operation which saves children from the exploitation of work in a marijuana establishment in California, and continued to stop the worst of the worst-including murderers, pedophiles, gang members and rapists,” she wrote in a recent email. “Any suggestion that the administration is not focused on these dangerous criminals is bad.”

During his campaign, Trump stressed several cases in which immigrants from the country were illegally arrested for horrible crimes. Among them: the murder of Laken Riley, 22, a nursing student in Georgia who was killed last year by a Venezuelan in the United States illegally. Jose Ibarra was found guilty of murder and other crimes in the murder of Riley in February 2024 and sentenced to life prison without the possibility of parole. Ibarra is looking for a new trial.

Trump in January signed Laken Riley’s law, which requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes.

Immigrants do not conduct violent crimes

Research has always noted that immigrants do not lead violent crimes in the United States and that they commit less crimes than Americans born by Aboriginal people. A working document in 2023 of the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, said that immigrants for 150 years have had lower imprisonment rates than those in the United States, rates have decreased since 1960, according to the newspaper, and immigrants were 60% less likely to be imprisoned.

Experts say that false rhetoric leaving the Trump administration creates real evil.

“This makes people from immigrant communities feel targeted and marginalized,” said Arulanantham. “It creates more political and social space for hatred in all its forms, including hatred crimes against immigrant communities.”

Eisen noted that the effect also extends to other communities.

“All Americans should want safe and flourishing communities and this idea that the President of the United States makes deceptive statements on the truth and the distortion of reality is not the means to offer public security,” she said.

Golddin writes for the Associated Press.