Less than 14 Percent of Immigrants were Charged or Convicted in the Past
When considering the essential, fundamental truth or the most important point of a matter after setting aside all minor details, complications, or distractions AI version). “Ultimately,” “the bottom line,” or “when all is said and done,” Trump does not like immigrants even if legal. Call it what you will. prejudice, discrimination, bigotry, bias . . . ?
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“History will judge this a crime against humanity.”
“Who, exactly, is ICE arresting, jailing, and abusing?”
Trump is lying about ICE arrests. He said his deportation machine would go after only the “worst of the worst.”
According to newly leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security, less than 14 percent of the 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in the past year have either been charged with or convicted of violent crimes.
The vast majority of immigrants jailed by ICE have no criminal record at all. A few have previously been charged with or convicted of nonviolent offenses, such as overstaying their visas or permission to be in the country.
(In the past, alleged violations of U.S. immigration laws were normally adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil — not criminal — proceedings.)
A large proportion of the people ICE has arrested are now in jail — some 73,000 — and being held without bail. They’re in what the Department of Homeland Security calls “detention facilities.”
Many lack adequate medical attention.
The Times reported this morning that a New Jersey woman, Leqaa Kordia, who has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, for nearly a year, suffered a seizure after she fell and hit her head. She was involved in an pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University in 2024 and detained for overstaying her visa, but has never been charged with a crime. A judge has twice ruled that she is not a threat to the United States.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered an external monitor to oversee California’s largest immigration detention center, California City Detention Facility, citing “shockingly deficient” medical care, including cases where detainees were denied medication for serious conditions.
A 2025 U.S. Senate investigation uncovered dozens of cases of medical neglect, with instances of detainees left without care for days and others being forced to compete for clean water.
Reports from early 2026 indicate that even children in family detention centers face poor conditions, including being returned to custody after hospitalization for severe illness without receiving necessary medication.
People held in detention facilities are deprived of the most basic means of communication to connect with their lawyers and the rest of the outside world, including phones, mail, and email. Some have been split off from the rest of their families, held hundreds if not thousands of miles away from their loved ones. Some of them are children.
Many are in the United States legally, awaiting determinations about their status as refugees fleeing violence or retribution in their home countries. Or they have green cards that would normally allow them to remain in the United States. Others have been in the United States for decades as law-abiding members of their communities.
They are hardly the “worst of the worst.” Many are like our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents who came to the United States seeking better lives. We are a nation of immigrants. While this doesn’t excuse being here without proper documentation, it doesn’t justify the draconian and inhumane measures being utilized by the Trump regime.
These leaked data from the Department of Homeland Security have not received the news coverage they deserve.
Moreover, these data pertain only to ICE. They don’t include arrests by Border Patrol agents deployed by the Trump administration to places far away from the U.S.-Mexico border, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, where Border Patrol agents have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people — including U.S. citizens — to question them about their immigration status.
This is a moral blight on America, a crime against humanity. As Americans, we are complicit.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
I’ve read often that immigrants commit non-immigration crimes less than the native-born population. For n=400,000, a statistic of 14% feels like it ought to be quite significant. It would be better to have samplings of criminal vs. not criminal, but with n=400,000, if 14% isn’t the result of a significant enforcement concentration on criminal aliens, the country has aconsiderable immigrant crime problem. This feels very likely to be good evidence that ICE does significantly focus on those with other criminal histories. If the goal is 20% (example) then close cooperation of local police, Sheriffs and state and local prosecutors could be very effective way to bring the numbers up.
Reich is clearly a professor…. ‘If you remove violations of valid law A from the history of a lot of folks who for decades have been in violation of A, then those folks are very law-abiding’. The “decades-long” population is a problem. Many likely no longer have much of a social connection to their native countries. They are Americans now more than anything else. But recognizing that and still holding that millions of more recent illegally present aliens need to be repatriated is likely a legal minefield. Interesting to see that Reich seems to recognize that the “decades “ condition sets them apart somehow.