Data Reveals ICE Is Overwhelmingly Arresting Immigrants With No Criminal Record in Texas

A Dramatic Shift in Who ICE Is Targeting

When the Trump administration launched its sweeping immigration crackdown, officials repeatedly promised to focus on dangerous criminals — "the worst of the worst." But new data tells a starkly different story, especially in Texas. Arrest records show that people with no criminal history have become the primary target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations across the state, raising urgent questions about who is actually being swept up in the government's mass deportation machine.

The Dallas ICE Field Office arrested more people without a criminal history than those with convictions or charges for six consecutive months, according to ICE data analyzed by KERA. More than 70% of people arrested each month from September through February — the last full month of available data — have no criminal conviction, though they may have pending charges. That's not a blip. That's a sustained, deliberate pattern.

In 2024, before Trump's inauguration and immigration crackdown, arrests of people without a prior conviction or charge tended to stay below 100 a month. The arrests of people without a charge or conviction peaked at nearly 1,700 in October, while convicted criminal arrests stayed flat at 640. The number of immigrants arrested with pending criminal charges also jumped in October to over 1,000. The scale of the shift is almost difficult to comprehend.

Texas at the Center of a National Enforcement Surge

Texas accounts for nearly 25% of all individuals in ICE detention — about 17,000 people — concentrated in facilities around El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston. Some of the biggest raids have taken place in and around Houston: ICE deported more than 500 people and arrested more than 400 suspected undocumented immigrants in and around the city in roughly one week in May. In October, ICE carried out another massive operation in Houston over 10 days, arresting more than 1,500 people.

ICE data also shows the Trump administration's rising reliance on agreements with state and local governments that permit police to carry out some functions of ICE agents, including immigration arrests. The most significant use of these so-called "287(g) agreements" has been in Florida and Texas, where most state law enforcement authorities have signed agreements with ICE. In practice, that means local police have become a pipeline into the federal deportation system.

Robust data from Texas showed that undocumented immigrants had much lower arrest rates than U.S.-born citizens — making the targeting of non-criminal immigrants even harder to justify on public safety grounds. In too many cases, a traffic stop can mean deportation. The case of Omar Salazar, a Dallas-area man with no criminal history who was stopped for a traffic violation and spent seven months in detention before being ordered to return to Mexico, is one of many that illustrate this reality.

The Human and Political Cost

The Trump administration's claim that it has been primarily deporting "the worst of the worst" is directly contradicted by the data. More than one out of three people deported from detention in 2025 had no criminal record at all — neither pending criminal charges nor any prior criminal conviction. Among those deported who did have a criminal conviction, the majority — 64% — had nothing more serious than a misdemeanor.

Monthly detentions of Latinos without criminal records increased sixfold compared to the final year of the Biden administration, driven largely by aggressive workplace and public-space arrests. There are approximately 73,000 immigrants currently held in ICE custody — the highest number ever recorded and an 84% increase from January 2025. The financial machinery behind this surge is enormous: under a funding bill the White House referred to as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," over $170 billion will be spent over four years on immigration measures.

Approval of Trump's immigration policies started at 46% when he was elected for a second time, but as of February has dropped to 38%, with disapproval sitting at 55%. As the data becomes harder to ignore and more stories like Salazar's reach the public, political pressure is likely to intensify — and the gap between the administration's stated priorities and its actual enforcement record will remain at the center of the debate.