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Andrea Austria / Media Matters

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Right-wing media have relentlessly pushed the false claim that ICE is going after the “worst of the worst”

In reality, data shows that “more than 60 percent of the people detained in at-large arrests since June did not have criminal convictions or pending charges”

Written by Ben Van Bloem, Isabella Sherk & Noah Dowe

Published

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expanded operations in major cities, right-wing media have falsely claimed their enforcement actions are focused on apprehending “the worst of the worst” criminal migrants.

These arguments stand in direct contradiction with data showing many of those arrested by ICE “had no criminal record” or “were being held solely because of civil violations of U.S. immigration law.” Additionally, there have been numerous documented arrests of legal residents and U.S. citizens. The claims also contradict statements made by administration officials previewing “collateral arrests” of migrants without criminal records and families being “deported together.”

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  • Data shows that a majority of those arrested in recent major ICE operations “had no criminal record,” and many detainees “were being held solely because of civil violations of U.S. immigration law”

    • CBS reported in November that ICE data shows “the number of immigration detainees without criminal records who are held in federal detention centers after getting arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement has increased by over 2,000% since the start of the second Trump administration.” According to CBS, “The official figures indicate that 30,986 — or 48% — of the ICE detainees in custody as of Nov. 16 lacked any criminal charges or convictions in the U.S. and were being held solely because of civil violations of U.S. immigration law.” Notably, “The statistics released by ICE do not specify the severity and nature of the charges or convictions for the detainees with criminal histories.” [CBS, 11/26/25]
    • The New York Times found that “more than half of those arrested” in ICE operations in major cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington “had no criminal record,” and only 7% had a violent conviction. According to the Times, “Less than 30 percent 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 non-violent convictions were for driving under the influence and other traffic offenses.” [The New York Times, 12/4/25]
    • The Washington Post found that ICE has shifted away from arresting migrants from local jails, instead increasingly engaging in “at-large arrests,” which involve “tracking them down on the streets and in communities.” According to the Post, “ICE is making more than four times as many at-large arrests per week as it did in President Donald Trump’s first term,” and “more than 60 percent of the people detained in at-large arrests since June did not have criminal convictions or pending charges." [The Washington Post, 12/28/25]
    • According to ICE data leaked to the Cato Institute, 73% of those booked into  custody from October 1 to November 15 last year “had no criminal conviction,” and 47% “had no criminal conviction nor even any pending criminal charges.” Additionally, “Only 8 percent of detained persons had either a violent or property crime,” and “a majority of criminal convicts had vice, immigration, or traffic convictions” instead. [Cato Institute, 11/24/25]
       

  • ICE has made many high-profile arrests of people without criminal convictions or pending charges — and has also arrested or detained US citizens and legal residents

    • ProPublica highlighted at least 170 cases of U.S. citizens — including children and military veterans — being arrested or detained, sometimes for days on end and without access to legal assistance. From the report: “When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recently analyzed how sweeps in Los Angeles have led to racial profiling. ‘If the government can grab someone because he’s a certain demographic group that’s correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.’” [ProPublica, 10/16/25]
    • Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was legally in the U.S. on a student visa, was arrested for supposed “activities in support of Hamas,” which a federal judge said was “likely to have been carried out solely in retaliation for an op-ed she wrote in a campus newspaper.” Öztürk was “detained for more than six weeks” in a detention center in Louisiana and had her student visa revoked. [NPR, 5/9/25; The Guardian, 12/9/25]
    • High school student Nory Sontay Ramos and her mother Estela Ramos Baten were detained at what they thought was a routine check-in with immigration officials and subsequently deported. The two were deported to Guatemala, where they had fled years earlier, and Sontay Ramos told MSNBC that her mother’s blood pressure medication was “taken away and not returned.” Two months later, Ramos Baten died at 45, unable to find her medication in Guatemala and “largely confined indoors” due to “fear of being recognized by the same gang that had once threatened them.” [The 19th, 7/8/25; MSNOW, 9/15/25]
    • ICE detained a 20-year-old Somali-American U.S. citizen in Minneapolis while he was on his lunch break. The man said he “was slammed to the ground and put into a chokehold” before being sent to a detention center. [KSTP, 12/10/25]
    • CBS reported on an Illinois father, Carlos Perez Ruiz, who was arrested by ICE after living in the U.S. for 35 years with “no criminal record.” Ruiz was detained “while waiting at a bus stop on his way to work” and told “he was just going to be sent to Mexico that coming Monday.” [CBS News, 1/8/26]
    • A freshman at Babson College was arrested and deported while flying home to visit her family for Thanksgiving. Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was forcibly flown to Honduras one day after a judge ordered she remain in the country. On January 13, the administration admitted that immigration agents had violated a court order by deporting her. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter apologized in court for the error, saying, “The government regrets that violation and acknowledges that violation.” [CNN, 12/22/25; The Boston Globe, 1/13/26]
    • KARE reporter Samie Solina spoke with day care centers in the Minneapolis area that reported workers had been detained by ICE. Two Spanish-immersion day cares reported that employees who were “legally authorized to work in the United States” had been detained by ICE — one in the parking lot outside the facility.  Another day care said DHS agents had sought to enter their center without a warrant in order to “investigate possible fraud.” [KARE, 1/13/26]
       

  • Administration officials have admitted that criminals are not the sole focus of the administration’s mass deportation program

    • While speaking prior to the start of Trump’s second term about mass deportation, White House border czar Tom Homan said “we expect a lot of collateral arrests” of immigrants without criminal backgrounds and suggested “families can be deported together.” Homan detailed his plans for mass deportations to the Washington Examiner, saying that people should “expect a lot of collateral arrests" in “sanctuary cities” and adding, “I mean, not priority criminal arrests. We can’t get the bad guy in jail. That means we have to go into the communities and find them, and there may be others. We expect a lot of collateral arrests.” [Washington Examiner, 12/18/24, CBS News, 10/27/24]
    • At a 2024 campaign stop, then-vice presidential candidate JD Vance said the administration would focus on “not just the bad people who came into our country, but people who violated the law coming into this country.” Vance also cast doubt on the status of legal migrants, calling thousands of Haitians in the United States here legally under temporary protected status “illegal aliens” and suggesting they would be deported under Trump. [The Guardian, 10/31/24; NPR, 9/18/24]
    • According to the Washington Examiner, Trump Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller “eviscerated” ICE officials in May for not making arrests at “Home Depot” and “7-Eleven.” Asked for comment on its reporting, the Washington Examiner noted this response from the White House: “‘Keeping President Trump’s promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously,’ White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote in an email. ‘We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States.’” [Washington Examiner, 5/30/25]
    • Sources told NBC News that Miller also “berated and threatened to fire senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if they did not begin detaining 3,000 migrants a day.” Axios reported that “ICE arrests of people without criminal charges or convictions surged in June,” the month after Miller’s demand to raise arrest quotas. As noted by The New Republic, “Miller’s mission of boosting deportation numbers of necessity requires arresting people who are not criminals or gang members—people who have jobs and have become integrated into U.S. communities—because there’s no other way to get the removals up.” [NBC News, 6/4/25; Axios, 7/17/25; The New Republic, 12/15/25]

  • Despite all this, right-wing media still relentlessly and falsely claim ICE is targeting the “worst of the worst”

    • Media Matters previously reviewed Fox News’ coverage of ICE operations, finding that 80% of segments in June and July 2025 “claimed that Trump’s primary targets were criminals while only 14% acknowledged that ICE has been sweeping up noncriminal migrants.” [Media Matters, 8/28/25]
    • Fox anchor Harris Faulkner argued that ICE is fulfilling “the president's goal” to get the “violent worst of the worst out of the country first.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 1/7/26] 
    • On Fox & Friends, Alpha News journalist Liz Collin said ICE “are going after the worst of the worst” in Minnesota but have been “impeded at every turn.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/8/26] 
    • Newsmax host Carl Higbie complained that Democrats make migrants “the victims” while “ICE agents coming to get the worst of the worst are somehow the villain there.” Referring to migrants, Higbie said, “People who broke our laws to get here … commit half the crime and half of them don't even speak English.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie This Week, 1/11/26] 
    • Right-wing podcast host Megyn Kelly said the officer who killed Renee Good was “trying to arrest child molesters and other disgusting violent criminals hurting the children and innocents of Minneapolis. That's what they're trying to do.” [SiriusXM, The Megyn Kelly Show, 1/12/26]
    • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt: “Celebrities tell us they're just ripping innocent people from their families and sending them away. No, the arrest of seriously horrible people in our communities is the real story.” Schmitt added, “Democrats decided unilaterally that our beautiful, wealthy country should be raided and looted by all the impoverished people of the world in recent years, as the left has gone absolutely off the cliff.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 1/12/26]
    • Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt: “ICE is trying to arrest violent criminals who are here illegally. And you have people and politicians and protesters that are trying to protect the worst offenders.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/13/26] 
    • Fox host Jesse Watters claimed his network was “swimming in mugshots” from criminal migrants, adding, “Have you seen any video of ICE tackling a guy on a lawnmower? Have you seen any video of Homan arresting Jose just watering azaleas?” He continued, “Why do Democrats want to keep these kinds of people in the country?” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 1/14/26] 
    • On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity attacked the media for “never telling you about the worst illegals” and instead focusing on “one or two cases where maybe, you know, they made a mistake.” Hannity claimed, “I have a list in front of me of 16 pages long of the worst illegals under President Trump since he's gotten back into office, from all over the globe, that have been convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape, assault, drugs.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 1/16/26]
    • Fox contributor David Webb said that “everyone” taken off the street by ICE represents a crime not committed, like “a child that is not potentially sodomized” or a woman “that is not attacked, possibly raped.” Webb argued, “Everyone they take off the street is a child that is not potentially sodomized that night. A woman that is not attacked, possibly raped. Someone who may be killed by a driver who doesn’t understand — because he doesn't speak the language or she doesn't speak the language.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 1/21/26]

  • Some in right-wing media have ignored the pretense altogether and openly advocated for deporting migrants without criminal records

    • War Room host Steve Bannon on mass deportations to El Salvador: “If there's some innocent gardeners in there? Hey, tough break for a swell guy.” Discussing sending migrants to El Salvador, Bannon stated, “Let them find a golden nugget, big deal. I don't care if they find a whole pan of gold nuggets. Maybe some people got caught up in it. Who knows?” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 3/17/25]
    • Bannon later declared more forcefully that “all ten million have to go, not just the criminals and the insane asylum.” He argued that the way to get things “cleaned up” is “to deport ten million illegal alien, wait for it, invaders.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 6/10/25]
    • Newsmax host Carl Higbie called on the Trump administration to “get them all out of here. And not just the worst of the worst,” going so far as to advocate for removing naturalized citizens. He stated, “Everyone who is here illegally, and even people who were naturalized under fake or fraudulent or even questionable circumstances, gone.” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 1/14/26]
    • Daily Wire host Michael Knowles: “You can't just deport the ones with face tattoos. You do, kind of, have to deport abuela.” “You can't have just random carve outs,” Knowles argued, adding, “Well, if you work on a farm — as if what? Illegals who work on farms can't commit crimes? … They've already committed a crime by coming over here.” [Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 7/7/25]
    • After a fan attending Megyn Kelly’s live show referenced his own unclear residency status, Kelly told him, “I think if you're not here lawfully, you got to go.” The audience member explained that he “was 10 months old when we moved here in 1989 as asylum seekers from communists,” leading Kelly to respond, “We can barely take care of our own, and we really can't take care of an extra 20 million who are here illegally.” [SiriusXM, The Megyn Kelly Show, 11/14/25]
    • Right-wing host Benny Johnson said “the major irritants of modern society” can be attributed to “20 million criminal aliens who don't belong here.” Johnson explained, “Everything has just skyrocketed in expense, and we can't figure out why. And our federal government is spending so much money on what exactly? Criminal aliens. The answer to every one of those questions. The answer to every one of those gripes and bitches and complaints is to deport 20 million criminal illegal aliens.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 11/20/25]
    • White nationalist Nick Fuentes called on the administration to be “industrial” with deportations because “30 million people are here and they don't want to go.” Referencing the killing of Renee Good, Fuentes added, “That's a far cry from these other people that are crying about a dead protester, you know. We're trying to get 30 million fucking people out of our country. You think we're not going to step on some toes?” [Rumble, America First with Nick Fuentes, 1/13/26]