In summer 2025, a rumor spread online that about 70% of people detained under U.S. President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign had no criminal record.
Social media users on X and Facebook circulated the claim, including Robert Reich — labor secretary under former President Bill Clinton — whose Facebook post had received more than 95,000 reactions as of this writing.
"72% of people swept up in Trump's immigration raids have no criminal record," Reich's post read. "That includes at least 250 people detained in deplorable conditions in Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz.' This was never about targeting criminals. It was always about terrorizing immigrants."
Reich's claim was based off legitimate Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention data that showed 71.7% of people detained in ICE facilities as of June 2025 were not convicted criminals. However, whether that statistic remains true for people with "no criminal record" depends on whether you define a "criminal record" as including pending criminal charges. Furthermore, it is unclear how many people detained in ICE facilities as of June 2025 had already been arrested before Trump returned to office in January 2025
In an emailed statement, the agency said that "70% of the arrests ICE has made are of illegal aliens with criminal convictions or have pending criminal charges." The agency did not provide documents indicating a timeline or evidence for this claim, nor did officials respond to questions about whether the data suggests Trump has not strictly targeted immigrants who are "dangerous criminals," despite the president's frequent promises to focus on arresting such individuals.
The Department of Homeland Security also did not respond to the aforementioned questions from Snopes. However, The Associated Press reported that DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin "called the assessment that ICE isn't targeting immigrants with a criminal record 'false' and said that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has directed ICE 'to target the worst of the worst — including gang members, murderers, and rapists.'"
"She counted detainees with convictions, as well as those with pending charges, as 'criminal illegal aliens,'" AP's story on the June ICE data said.
(As for Reich's reference to "Alligator Alcatraz," the Miami Herald reported on July 13 that more than 250 people detained in the Florida facility had no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States. Snopes has not independently verified the Herald's work.)
Breaking down the ICE statistics
ICE's data breaks down the "criminality" of its detained population into three categories: "Convicted Criminal," "Pending Criminal Charges" and "Other Immigration Violator." Per the chart below, available for download on ICE's website, 57,861 were detained by ICE as of June 2025. Of that group, 16,366, or 28.3% of the detained population, had a criminal conviction. An additional 14,318 people — 24.7% — had pending criminal charges and 27,177 had neither pending criminal charges nor convictions, representing 47% of the population (see the "Detention FY25" tab after downloading the data).
Data on detention in ICE facilities as of June 2025, broken down by arresting agency and "criminality." CBP refers to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Being in the United States illegally is a civil, not a criminal, violation.
Merriam-Webster defines a "criminal record" as a "known record of being arrested in the past for committing a crime." In practice — such as when an employer requests a prospective employee's criminal history — criminal records or a "criminal history" can include "contact with law enforcement agencies and the courts and may include arrests, detentions, convictions, and more," according to Cornell University.
Thus, even if a person has not had any criminal convictions, they might, technically, have a "criminal record," despite the legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty." In other words, if one defines "criminal record" only by criminal convictions, then it is true that about 72% of people detained by ICE as of June 2025 had no criminal record. But if one defines "criminal record" by both convictions and charges, then the aforementioned statement could be considered false, and it would be more accurate to say 47% of people detained by ICE had no criminal record under that definition of the term.
The statistics represent the number of people in ICE detention facilities as of June 2025 — they do not represent the number of people detained specifically under Trump. That is because ICE detention can last days, months or even years. According to ICE's own data, at the end of June, 5,343 people had been in custody for 180 to 365 days, 686 had been detained for 366 to 730 days, and 75 had been detained for more than 730 days (see "ICLOS and Detainees").
That adds up to at least 6,104 people who were arrested before Trump's second term.
Few detained by ICE had history of violent crimes
It is also worth noting that these statistics did not break down who is considered a "dangerous criminal" compared with those accused of minor crimes. However, ICE also issues threat levels to detainees based on their criminal convictions and charges (see Page 6 of the agency's classification system standards). As first reported by the AP and independently verified by Snopes, ICE facility data as of June 23, 2025,
Of the 47,238 people in these facilities, ICE gave 7,511 a threat level. Officials graded 7.1% of detainees as a level 1 threat — which "may include detainees with minor criminal histories and non-violent felony charges and convictions." An additional 3.8% were given a level 2 threat, which "may not include any detainee with a history or pattern of violent assaults" (Page 5). Finally, 4.9% were classified as a level 3 threat — the highest classification.
In sum …
As of June 2025, 71.7% of people detained in ICE facilities had no criminal convictions, but 24.7% had pending criminal charges. A little under half the detained population — 47.1% — had no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. ICE data suggested only a small percentage of people in the agency's custody had a history of violent crimes.
Additionally, because these statistics include several thousand people detained before Trump's second term, they do not solely reflect Trump's mass detention and deportation campaign, but do largely represent arrests and detentions under Trump.