Over 400,000 Detained by ICE Under Trump with No Violent Felony Conviction, Government Data Reveals

Only 3% of individuals taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first 14 months of Donald Trump's second administration had a violent felony conviction in the United States, according to an ABC News analysis of government data published on 12 June 2026.

The findings directly follow Trump's repeated pledge to go after the 'worst of the worst' criminal offenders residing in the country without legal status. Of the 438,537 people detained between 20 January 2025 and 11 March 2026, just 13,018 had a violent felony conviction on record. The analysis defined 'violent felony' as homicide, sexual assault, robbery, or assault.

What the Numbers Show

The data were drawn from two primary sources — records obtained by the Deportation Data Project via Freedom of Information Act requests to ICE, and ICE data provided to the University of Washington Centre for Human Rights. The Deportation Data Project's records are sourced from the Department of Homeland Security's PERSIST database, which tracks immigration cases from January 2022 through early March 2026.

Under Trump, the federal immigration detention population has reached a record high of around 60,000, according to ABC News. The highest figure recorded under the previous administration was 39,748 in November 2023, according to a nonprofit data-gathering group. The 3% violent felony rate is consistent with figures seen during the Biden administration — meaning the Trump administration is detaining a far greater total number of people without a corresponding rise in the proportion of violent offenders.

Families Caught in the Crackdown

The data also shed light on how enforcement operations have affected families with direct ties to the United States. In the first eight months of 2025 alone, ICE apprehended the parents of approximately 14,450 US-born children — a figure that nearly surpassed the total for all of 2024 and exceeded the yearly counts for both 2022 and 2023.

Of those apprehended during the administration's first seven months, more than 9,700 children had at least one parent placed into immigration detention. Parents of more than 7,000 of those children were eventually deported, with just 265 of those deported parents carrying a violent felony conviction.

Andrea Flores, founder of Securing America's Promise and a former Department of Homeland Security official, said: 'We are going to have a class of children who lose their parents under this administration that is bigger than we probably have seen in modern history.'

ICE also apprehended 4,843 spouses of US citizens during the same eight-month period. More than 2,000 of those spouses were deported within the administration's first seven months, with 165 holding a violent felony conviction. Flores added: 'We cannot underplay what it means to have even just a spouse go to detention, because what if they are the primary earner in that household? We're talking about economic consequences. We're talking about the emotional costs of not having access to that family member.'

DHS Pushes Back

The Department of Homeland Security disputed the framing of the findings. In a statement to ABC News, a DHS spokesperson said the data was 'being cherry picked by the Deportation Data Project to peddle a false narrative,' adding that 'nearly 70% of ICE arrests are criminal illegal aliens.'

The statement further argued that many individuals counted as non-criminals are 'actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don't have a rap sheet in the US.' DHS also maintained that 'every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally.' Unlawful entry is generally classified as a civil violation under US law, not a criminal offence.

The figures carry significant weight at a time when the Trump administration's immigration enforcement approach remains one of the most debated domestic policy issues in the United States. With detention numbers at historic highs and a growing number of US citizen family members affected, the gap between the administration's stated targeting of violent offenders and the broader scope of actual detentions is likely to fuel continued legal and political scrutiny.