Aggressive federal immigration raids touted by the Trump administration as crime-busting victories have mostly swept up people with no criminal record, according to a new analysis of publicly available data.
President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have justified the deployment of armed masked officers in big Democrat-run cities by claiming local “sanctuary” policies shield criminal immigrants—repeatedly insisting they are targeting the “worst of the worst.”
But in headline operations across Los Angeles, Chicago, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., more than half of those arrested, often in brutal fashion, had no prior convictions at all—compared with roughly a third nationwide, the New York Times found.
The outlet analyzed a trove of arrest and detention records released by the Deportation Data Project that runs through Oct. 15, 2025.
It found that, ironically, the highest-profile sweeps proved the least effective at finding people with criminal histories, especially violent ones.
In the D.C. surge, the Times found 84 percent of arrestees had no previous convictions, and just 2 percent had convictions for violence.
In Illinois’s controversial “Operation Midway Blitz”—which was beset by allegations of Border Patrol brutality and legal wranglings—two-thirds of those rounded up had no convictions.
Massachusetts and the Los Angeles area showed similarly lopsided shares. Less than 30 percent of the people arrested in any of these operations had been convicted of a crime, the Times analysis found, and only a sliver had a violent conviction.
The most common non-violent priors were DUIs and traffic offenses, the paper found.
The Times also tracked the national picture. Since January, the share of detainees with criminal convictions has fallen to about 28 percent by mid-October, while arrests of people with no criminal history rose faster than any other category.
The portion with violent convictions fell to about 5 percent by mid-October, down from 15 percent in 2024, the newspaper reported.
Under President Joe Biden last year, 63 percent of ICE arrestees had prior convictions, and 24 percent faced pending charges.
The Trump administration has argued that aggressive city deployments are needed because “sanctuary” policies thwart efforts to target criminals, combining ICE with Border Patrol and National Guard units.
Traditionally, ICE relied on local jails and prisons—taking custody after people finished their sentences or were released.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the Times: “Seventy percent of illegal aliens ICE arrested across the country have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges just in the United States.”
The Daily Beast has approached DHS for comment.
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