The federal deployments that have swept through major cities as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have led to thousands of arrests. But they have been less effective at apprehending immigrants with a criminal record than more routine operations elsewhere, new data shows.
In high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and across Massachusetts, more than half of those arrested had no criminal record, compared with a third of immigrants arrested nationwide.
The Trump administration has said that the aggressive operations are necessary because so-called sanctuary city policies have made it harder for ICE agents to go after immigrants who have committed crimes. It has deployed other federal forces, including Border Patrol and the National Guard, to expand its crackdown.
The operations have upended life for many residents and prompted protests and backlash. Local leaders say they have done little to make their cities safer.
Less than 30% of the people arrested in any of these operations had been convicted of a crime, an analysis of the data shows, and a very small share had been convicted of a violent crime. The most common nonviolent convictions were for driving under the influence and other traffic offenses.
The data was obtained through a lawsuit and made available by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The New York Times. It contains details on every immigration arrest and detention conducted by ICE through Oct. 15. Violent crimes were determined based on categories from the National Crime Information Center. The analysis focused on periods of escalated federal operations. It was unclear if all arrests made by Border Patrol in these places were included.
Details on the new operations that began last week in Minneapolis and New Orleans, and the brief November operations in North Carolina, were not yet available.
The same trends seen in the local crackdowns were seen nationwide, as the share of people with criminal convictions ICE has detained fell to 28% in mid-October from 46% at the start of Trump’s term. Another 26% had pending charges.
The share of people arrested under Trump with past violent convictions for crimes such as assault, robbery or homicide was down to 5% in mid-October, the data shows, compared with 15% in 2024.
© 2025 The New York Times Company