Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
A leaked document obtained by CBS News reveals that only a tiny fraction of immigrants detained by the Trump administration last year have violent criminal records.According to CBS News, the internal US Department of Homeland Security document shows that just 14% of immigrants taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025 had either been charged with or convicted of violent criminal offenses.
The DHS report also shows 40% of immigrants detained last year have no criminal record at all except for civil immigration law violations, such as living unlawfully in the US or overstaying a visa, which CBS News noted 'are typically adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil—not criminal—proceedings.'The internal document undermines President Donald Trump's past claims that his administration is focused primarily on deporting 'the worst of the worst' undocumented immigrants, such as those belonging to criminal gangs. In reality, the document shows, less than 2% of immigrants detained last year had any sort of gang affiliation.As noted last month by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, ICE during Trump's second term has grown more aggressive in detaining people with no prior criminal offenses save for civil immigration law violations.In January 2024, for example, immigrants with no prior criminal record accounted for just 6% of ICE detainees. By January 2025, that percentage surged to 43%.ICE has drastically ramped up its arrests of immigrants in the last year, as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has demanded that the agency hit arrest quotas of at least 3,000 per day.While ICE has not yet reached that goal, they did make an estimated 393,000 arrests during Trump's first year back in the White House, an average of more than 1,000 per day.CBS News notes that the internal DHS document 'does not include arrests by Border Patrol agents, who the Trump administration has deployed to places far away from the US-Mexico border, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis,' where they 'have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people, including US citizens, to question them about their immigration status.'
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