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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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New numbers from the Trump administration released on Friday showed 70 percent of immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention did not have criminal convictions.
The latest detention management stats from ICE showed a record 61,226 people were being held in ICE facilities across the country as of August 29.
The Trump administration has insisted the majority of immigrants being detained by ICE are known criminals, but the data provided by the agency appeared to go against this.
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Newsweek reached out to ICE for comment via email Friday evening.
Why It Matters
Immigrants residing in the country illegally and legally, with valid documentation such as green cards and visas, as well as those with criminal histories, have been detained. Many with past convictions, even from decades ago, have found themselves in ICE custody despite spending years without facing serious immigration problems. Some detainees have reported being held in inhumane and harsh conditions.
The Trump administration has drastically increased its efforts to detain suspected illegal immigrants as part of the president's efforts to deliver on his promise of mass deportations. ICE was given a much larger budget as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allowing it to expand detention space.
What To Know
ICE regularly shares updates on its detention numbers, with stats showing a steady increase in the total number of immigrants being held at any one time over the past eight months.
As of Friday, out of the 61,226 detainees, 18,205 were convicted criminals, 15,593 had pending criminal charges, and 27,428 were being held on other immigration violations, reflecting normal trends for ICE detention.
Arrests within the U.S. now make up the majority of monthly book-ins to ICE detention centers, after several years of Border Patrol arrests making up the larger share as officials dealt with a high number of illegal crossings from Mexico.
Under President Donald Trump, the focus has shifted inwards due to far fewer border crossings and targets to detain those living in the U.S. without legal status.
Critics of the way the administration is handling immigration enforcement have raised concerns that holding people without criminal convictions or charges unnecessarily burdens the system and pulls undocumented immigrants away from their families.
ICE arrests making their way into detention centers have dropped slightly at 21,329 compared to June 2025 when the number was 31,597.
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What People Are Saying
Austin Kocher, an immigration professor at Syracuse University, wrote in his analysis of the data Friday: "To emphasize, we don't know what the criminal charges and convictions are, so we can't assume that they represent particularly egregious crimes; nor can we assume that someone without a criminal charge/conviction in the US doesn't have a charge/conviction in another country. This isn't a moral or political perspective—this is just what the data says."
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official on the arrests of alleged illegal immigrants on Friday: "We've said it before, and we'll keep saying it: If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we WILL find you, arrest, you, and deport you. The days of letting dangerous criminals terrorize American citizens are over. President Trump and Secretary Noem will continue to do everything in their power to fulfill the American people's mandate to remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from our country."
What Happens Next?
The Trump administration is seeking to expand ICE detention capacity, as well as recruit thousands of new officers, so that it can arrest and then hold a larger number of immigrants set for deportation.
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