ICE Promised to Hunt Criminals — The Data Tells a Very Different Story

A Campaign Promise Meets the Numbers

Since Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, immigration has been a centerpiece of his platform. On the trail, Trump promised to prioritize deporting what he repeatedly described as "the worst of the worst" — people in the U.S. without authorization who were convicted or accused of serious crimes. But a sweeping analysis of federal data now tells a starkly different story, particularly in the state where ICE has been most active.

The Houston Chronicle examined ICE arrest records obtained through the Deportation Data Project using the Freedom of Information Act and found that between February 2025 and February 2026, more than 38,000 people in Texas without criminal convictions or pending charges were arrested by ICE — more than either those with criminal convictions or those facing pending criminal charges. That's not a footnote. That's the majority.

A Dramatic Shift Over Time

In Trump's first three months in office, 21.9% of those arrested had no criminal record. That percentage rose to 34.2% in the following three months, and then to 40.5% in the three months ending in mid-October. The trend line is unmistakable — the longer enforcement has continued, the further it has drifted from its stated focus on dangerous offenders.

Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450 percent in Trump's first year, driven by increases in tactics like "at-large" arrests, roving patrols, worksite raids, and re-arrests of people attending immigration court hearings or ICE check-ins. After an initial focus on immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, ICE increasingly shifted its attention toward people whose only known violation was related to immigration itself.

Immigration advocates point out that many of the people being arrested are detained at meetings that are part of the formal asylum process. "A lot of folks that they are arresting with no charges, they're showing up to check in. They have an asylum claim that came in during the Biden administration, or maybe even during the first Trump administration," said Houston Chronicle reporter Julián Aguilar.

The Government Pushes Back

The Department of Homeland Security disputes the implication of those numbers, arguing that the data is being presented in a misleading way. DHS says nearly 70% of ICE arrests nationwide involve what it calls "criminal illegal aliens," and has also argued that some people classified as non-criminals may have committed crimes outside the U.S. that don't show up in American criminal records.

Aguilar pushed back on that defense: "ICE, when it has a big round of criminal arrests, they send out press releases with mugshots. So it seemed likely that they would provide proof of criminality if they had it. But instead, they sort of quibble with the numbers and say that they're being cherry-picked." The overseas-crimes argument, he noted, would be nearly impossible to verify without cross-checking records in individuals' home countries.

Texas at the Center, and What Comes Next

Texas has had the highest number of ICE arrests since Trump took office, at about 94,000 — more than double the number of arrests in any other state, followed by Florida, California, New York, and Georgia. The scale of enforcement in the Lone Star State makes it a bellwether for what the national picture looks like.

The number of people held in ICE detention rose nearly 75 percent in 2025, climbing from roughly 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by December — the highest level ever recorded. With Congress authorizing $45 billion in new detention funding, the system could more than triple in size over the next four years. As enforcement capacity expands, the gap between the administration's rhetoric and its actions may only grow harder to ignore — and harder for affected communities to absorb.