Who is getting detained and deported?
Think citizens are safe? Think again.
On December 31, 2025 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which controls Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), posted this on its official X account:
The post has received over 20 million views so far, and 34,000 people “hearted” it. I assume that the 34,000 people who loved this idea did so because they believe the Trump administration’s claims that millions of violent criminals are illegally entering the U.S. from “third-world” countries to wreak terror and commit crimes. Certainly, the U.S. would be better off if 100 million violent criminals were deported.
But are there 100 million illegal immigrant violent criminals in the U.S.?
There are only about 350 million people in the U.S., so it’s highly unlikely that one-third of our entire population are both undocumented and violent criminals. So how many are there, really?
Since 2017, the libertarian Cato Institute has sought to answer this question. It’s difficult because there is no national database that tracks the immigration status of those accused or convicted of crimes. So, Cato decided the best way to arrive at an answer would be to look at the people actually convicted and sent to prison for various crimes and then sort them by their origin: native born citizen, legal immigrant, and illegal immigrant. They found that both legal and illegal immigrants went to jail at a lower rate than native-born citizens. For every 100,000 illegal immigrants, 613 end up in jail, versus 1,221 native-born citizens.
The next step is to determine the total number of criminals represented by those numbers. The Center for Immigration Studies found that about 15.8 million immigrants are here illegally.
I did the math. If 613 illegal immigrants out of every 100,000 are incarcerated (for any crime), then if there are 15.8 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., there are an estimated 96,854 criminals among the 15.8 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.1
But something doesn’t add up here. The DHS budget states:
To support the Administration’s strategy of 1,000,000 removals per year and 100,000 detention beds, the FY 2026 Budget includes significant investments in Enforcement and Removal Operations.
And DHS also stated:
“In President Trump’s first year back in office, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations.”
It’s well known that Trump has said that ICE and DHS would prioritize the “worst of the worst” in their activities to detain and deport. So, if there are 100,000 criminals (rounding up from the 96K to be conservative) among the illegal population, surely they would have been gone by now, since, according to its own website, “nearly 3 million” have left the U.S.?
Maybe DHS isn’t just talking about illegal immigrants. Maybe they are including the “worst of the worst” among the legal immigrants in the U.S. According to the Pew Research Center, as of June 2025, 51.9 million immigrants (including all legal statuses) lived in the U.S. Subtract the number of illegal immigrants, and you get 36.1 million legal immigrants. That would add another 115,159 people to the criminal list (based on the incarceration rate of 319 per 100,000 legal immigrants). Let’s call it 200,000 foreign-born criminals, regardless of status (legal or illegal).
To recap: of the entire foreign-born population (both legal and illegal) in the U.S., about 200,000 have committed a crime that resulted in jail time.
ICE is targeting 90,000 detentions per month. It’s mathematically impossible that most of those people are criminals. A New York Times analysis agreed. The rate of people arrested by ICE with no criminal history has grown rapidly, even while the arrests of violent criminals remain static. And TracReports found that only 1.6% of new deportation orders in 2025 were based on criminal activity.
So, at this point in our analysis, we have to assume that the 1 million deportations per year that DHS is planning (and asking Congress to provide a budget for) must include all illegal immigrants, regardless of whether they have committed a crime, and regardless of whether they came here as children, and other circumstances surrounding their immigration status. That would bring the total to 15.8 million detentions and deportations, plus the 115K criminal legal immigrants. So let’s round it up and call it 16 million.
So: it’s definitely NOT about violent criminals. It looks like the Trump Administration is planning to deport all illegal immigrants. Maybe you are ok with that. Maybe you are not. But it is definitely not what Trump advertised.
100 Million Deportations
I started this essay with the DHS post on X, which presented an idyllic picture of the U.S. following “100 million deportations”. But all criminals of any immigration type in the U.S. amount to only 16 million. Who else are they referring to?
There are 51.9 million total foreign-born people in the U.S. That includes people from all over the world, over 70% of whom are naturalized citizens. Are they all getting deported? Is that what this post means? That anyone who wasn’t born here is out, even if they have citizenship? Or is it something even worse?
We might have a clue from the most recent DHS budget bill that passed in the House of Representatives. Representative Veronica Escobar (D-TX) explained:
During our debate in the House Appropriations Committee, I successfully amended the bill to include language that would prevent ICE from apprehending and deporting U.S. citizens. When the bill was reported out of committee, it included my amendment. But during negotiations, I was told that the White House - Stephen Miller in particular - stripped my amendment from the bill.
This means Donald Trump does not want to protect U.S. citizens. Let that sink in: Donald Trump does not want U.S. citizens protected from being detained and deported by ICE. The Trump agenda has never been about apprehending and deporting the “worst of the worst.” Their own statistics prove that.
If ICE can detain and deport U.S. citizens, then perhaps that 100 million number starts to make sense. Who else could they deport? Trump himself has said he wanted to deport “homegrowns next”. When Trump and Miller talk about “homegrowns”, they don’t just mean violent criminals. They mean anyone they deem a threat. Three months ago, Stephen Miller said:
The Democratic Party and those who are committing violence in this country do not believe in the legitimacy of the sovereign territory of the United States.
The DHS X post also referred to the U.S. as being “besieged by the third world.” Could that be a signal that brown or black people, or people from certain countries, will be prioritized for deportation? Whatever the answer, it's clear that this mass deportation project is not the culmination of rational policymaking.
There are many things I fear when I listen to the news from Minnesota, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Maine. I worry that ICE will start detaining and deporting anyone who isn’t white and anyone who tries to stand up against them. I worry that the violence from ICE will continue. If the Senate passes a bill that funds ICE without explicitly constraining its authority, I believe we will face precisely those scenarios.
The DHS funding bill is currently stalled in the Senate—please call your Senator and urge them not to pass the spending bill unless it meaningfully regulates and reforms ICE, shields U.S. citizens from deportation, and protects all people from inhumane treatment.
This calculation assumes the rate from the Cato Institute (613 per 100,000) is accurate and applies uniformly across the entire population. Crime statistics involving immigration status can vary significantly depending on the source, methodology, definition of "crime" (e.g., whether it includes only violent crimes, all crimes, or immigration violations), and the time period covered.
Great information!
Great reporting! And, very scary 💩We should all be worried and resisting!