The Trump administration is building a multi-billion dollar deportation industrial complex to meet its reported goal of arresting 3,000 immigrants a day—more than one million immigrants a year. Despite the administration’s claims that it is targeting “the worst of the worst,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data show the great majority of immigrants in detention—more than 70 percent in early September—have no criminal record. In its haste to hit the historically high target, ICE is even arresting and locking up U.S. citizens.
If not criminals, who exactly is the administration arresting and detaining?
According to the Cato Institute’s analysis of ICE data, between Oct.1, 2024 and June 16, 2025, ICE arrested approximately 204,000 people. Around 65 percent, or 133,000 individuals, had no criminal record at all but were being held in detention because the government claimed they do not have a lawful reason to stay in the United States. Compared to the first year of the first Trump administration, arrests of noncriminals have increased 500 percent.
Many immigrants with no criminal background entered the United States lawfully or were protected from deportation at the time of their arrest, but the government now seeks to end their status. They may have been allowed to enter the country under a process called “parole,” which permits individuals to stay in the country temporarily at the government’s discretion, typically for humanitarian reasons. They could have been granted temporary protected status, which applies to certain individuals who face unsafe conditions in their home country; or they could have come to a port of entry and requested protection from persecution or torture. Others could have entered unlawfully—an act that under the law is confusingly both a criminal act and permissible if the person enters to apply for asylum; or overstayed a visa—an act that qualifies them for deportation under civil law but is not a criminal offense.
ICE does not publish data about the percentage of people in each category, but the Pew Research Center estimates that as of 2023, 5.6 million immigrants—approximately 40 percent of the 14 million immigrants in the country without permanent status and thus categorized by DHS as “without documentation”—had some form of limited status or protection from removal, such as a temporary protected status, parole, or a pending asylum application.
In fact, it is possible that far more than 40 percent of those arrested and detained have some legal protection from deportation. To meet its aggressive target, the government is likely pursuing immigrants who are the easiest to locate—such as those who already gave the government their address when they applied for some form of protection. And we know that the administration is targeting people who are going through normal, lawful activities like taking their kids to school, attending church, going to work, renewing a visa, going to an ICE office for a required check in with an immigration officer, or appearing in immigration court. Indeed, the sharpest growth in ICE arrests is those without a criminal record.
Cato concluded that ICE classifies 35 percent of the individuals it arrested as having a criminal offense on their records, with only 7 percent convicted of a violent offense. The upshot is that at least 65 percent of the people ICE is keeping behind bars are being detained without a public safety rationale. Instead of focusing detention resources on people who could pose a significant public safety risk, the administration is largely locking up immigrants who pose little to no risk, separating them from their families, employers, and communities.
In its zeal to arrest as many people as fast as possible, ICE has also unlawfully detained U.S. citizens, despite having no authority to do so. Northwestern University Professor Jacqueline Stevens, a scholar of deportation, analyzed cases in two detention centers from 2006 to 2008 and found that one percent of people in immigration detention were citizens. Assuming that percentage has held steady, that would mean over 2,000 American citizens locked up by ICE this fiscal year alone. The actual number may be even higher; Stevens only counted detainees who were later confirmed by a judge to be a citizen, excluding many released before reaching court.
Keeping immigrants with no criminal record behind bars has led to significant overcrowding, deaths, illness, and hunger. Immigrants in a New York facility sued the government, claiming they were not given enough food, were denied access to medical services and their attorneys, were not given soap, toothbrushes or menstrual supplies, and were required to sleep on the floor in overcrowded rooms. The court granted plaintiffs’ injunction and attributed the conditions to the administration’s ongoing policy of detaining immigrants to the maximum extent possible: “the heat remains on, and the temperature is likely to rise.”
With ICE rushing to open new offices nationwide, the deportation machine is expanding its reach and capacity, further accelerating arrests and detentions. The effects of large-scale immigration detention on immigrants, their families, their communities, and the U.S. economy will take months or years to measure.
Indiscriminate immigration detention is also expensive. American taxpayers pay approximately $152 dollars a day per person to keep immigrants detained, thus keeping tens of thousands of immigrants who pose little to no public safety threat in detention for millions of dollars a day. Less intrusive alternatives to detention, such as the assignment of a case manager, cost as little as $4 a day. Assigning a case manager to the 65 percent of immigrants without a criminal record would save taxpayers nearly $5.5 billion each year, and case management programs have resulted in nearly perfect compliance. Under one program, 99 percent of immigrants showed up for a required appointment with an ICE officer and 100 percent appeared for court hearings.
Detaining citizens and immigrants without a public safety rationale is inconsistent with American values of liberty or fairness. It is also a waste of taxpayer money.
