I mean, I'm not exactly pro-ICE here, but if 53% of them have a conviction or charge, that does tell a different story. That's surprisingly high.
The 26% you miscategorized are people with pending charges. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions
That's a crazy amount of people. ICE needs to do better.
They are going after illegal immigrants.
Hence the name ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
> President Donald Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he will be “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly claimed that they are arresting the “worst of the worst.”
When speaking to Trump supporting friends who employ illegal immigrants they specifically defend that it is only the "bad ones."
They still feel this way because their news sources don't tell them about restaurants being raided and the entire kitchen being arrested or ICE raids on agriculture.
Problems aren't problems until it happens to them.
If you can't run a business without breaking the law (including illegal labor), then that business shouldn't exist.
That's a border control policy known as "no border control at all".
Of course visa violations aren't a crime, did you ever had to fill administrative papers? What if misfiling your taxes was a crime, regardless of intent? Do you want everyone who made a mistake on their taxes to go to prison preventively? Or only fraudsters?
They are also going after legal immigrants who have any crime on their record, even just a misdemeanor from decades ago. There was one a few weeks ago for example of a Canadian who has lived here for something like 30 years, since he was a child, on a permanent resident visa. As a teen he participated in some normal but illegal high school shenanigan and got a misdemeanor on his record. When returning from a business trip to Canada he was stopped and deported over that high school misdemeanor.
They are also trying to make it hard for these people to defend themselves. For example in another case they are trying to deport a legal permanent resident who came here is a kid from the UK something like 40 or 50 years ago. She has an American husband, American children, and American grandchildren. A decade or two she wrote a check for a small amount and failed to ensure enough money was in the account. She pleaded guilty to the lowest level of passing a bad check and served probation. This is the only blemish on her record.
Not only have they decided that she needs to be expelled as quickly as possible, they put her in a detention facility far from her home even though there are facilities with room much closer to home, making it hard for her family to visit. I believe I read they have also moved her at least once, making it hard for her lawyer to visit. (I believe she also may have spent time in solitary, because she kept asking for someone to be allowed to bring her prescription medicine, but I may be mixing that up with another case).
Even if you can somehow make a case that every non-citizen who is legally here no matter how long should be deported if they have any blemish on their record, no matter how minor, I don't see how you can make case that they should deliberately make it hard for them to get a hearing.
I also don't see how you can make a case that they should even be in detention. If you really think there is a risk that they would run rather than stay around until their hearing, an ankle monitor would be sufficient and cheaper.
Please remember that 23% of those with no conviction but pending charges should be considered innocent until proven guilty. If you get hit with a traffic stop, you shouldn't be lumped in with violent offenders. That's not how our justice system works.
Democratic voters always circle the wagons to protect the administration, regardless of the administration's actions, when one of their own is POTUS. The Republican voters do the exact same thing.
Yes, for whatever additional crimes they have committed.
Being here illegally, that's what ICE is after (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and they are fully in their prevue to send home people who are here against the law.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is enforcing immigration policy. Everyone (and I mean everyone) not here legally needs to go back home. This was common sense up until a few years ago.
This is all while companies reap the benefit of and build their pricing structures off of cheap, undocumented labor. We are profiting off of criminalizing people who are just trying to live their lives.
You might count yourself fortunate not to be in this kind of a predicament, but it may benefit you to consider educating yourself on the subject and having a bit of empathy for others instead of relying on categorical absolutes.
Some/many of these folks did not enter illegally and did not overstay their visa, but requested asylum at the border and were released into the US. The immigration judges are also not ruling against the asylum seeker, which would be understandable, but it seems the cases are being cut short.
I admit I don't understand the legal details, but it seems to me that this particular group of people targeted by ICE are not here against the law, and also didn't get a fair chance to complete their asylum cases.
I do approve of local police arranging the handover to ICE of convicted criminals for deportation after they've served their sentence.
Second, ICE is going way beyond arresting/deporting illegal aliens. In Boston they stopped a swearing-in ceremony literally minutes before immigrants were about to become citizens.
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/12/08/unspeakabl...
Agree if they are charged with a crime. But is being present in the country without a valid visa (or overstaying a visa, or similar) a criminal charge or an administrative violation? If I park my car where I'm not supposed to, it gets towed. There's no trial or presumption of innocence. The car is where it is.
Your analogy of an illegally parked car is spurious because where a car may park is pretty unequivocal. I hope that what I've described here helps you understand that this would be like someone choosing not to tow a Ford but opting to to tow a Kia even though they're parked against the same red curb.
And even if that's totally illogical, doesn't it make sense that most people aren't convicted criminals, even those who immigrated here illegally?
This seems roughly in line with the US population in general? https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/criminal-rec...
obikatsu•10h ago
27% People Detained by ICE Have Convictions
5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions
kgwxd•9h ago