Exclusive: Leaked ICE Data
One out of every three “illegals” detained have no criminal history
One in three so-called “illegal aliens” deported from the Los Angeles area are people without a criminal record, internal ICE data I’ve obtained reveals.
These data come from the Los Angeles field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and cover the period from last October to June of this year. Provided to me by a law enforcement source, the data appears in an internal ICE memo detailing an upcoming visit to LA by homeland security’s deputy secretary Troy Edgar.
During this time, according to the leaked data, ICE has arrested 5,232 people during its various raids. Of that number, some 3,513 had criminal histories, 350 of which are alleged gang members and 43 are labeled “known or suspected” terrorists, meaning that they are identified by the FBI as members or associates of transnational criminal organizations.
According to ICE, 3,257 have been deported, including 2,069 with criminal histories, including 185 alleged gang members and 18 known or suspected terrorists. The total number of people ICE believes to be residing in the Los Angeles area without legal status is 480,869.
The data provides rare insight into the activity of one of ICE’s most important field offices.
ICE’s publicly available statistics on enforcement actions are only current as of January. (ICE did not respond to a request for comment, but as of this writing even that data is no longer available from the agency.)
Though all have violated immigration laws, the distinction between those in the U.S. who are productive members of society and those who are criminals is stark. Polling suggests that Americans overwhelmingly support deportation of those accused of committing violent crimes (89 percent in one poll), whereas over half of Americans oppose deporting those who have not broken any laws.
Even Republicans in Congress are starting to get nervous with the agency’s ham-handed tactics, that is, beyond Trump’s campaign pledge to only target people with criminal records. While people without criminal records are a minority of those both arrested and deported, it is a significant number and one that used to be much smaller.
Earlier this month, six Republican members of Congress led by Rep. Tony Gonzales, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, sent a letter to ICE’s Acting Director Todd Lyons. The carefully-worded letter starts by expressing their support for the deportation of convicted criminals like murderers, sex offenders and smugglers, before cautioning:
“we are also concerned that your limited resources may be stretched to pursue individuals that do not constitute an immediate threat to public safety.”
The letter continues:
“Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives … we need to give absolute priority to every violent offender and convicted criminal illegal alien present in our nation. Diverting limited resources to other objectives puts our national security at risk.”
The day after the letter was made public, President Trump said that “our farmers are being hurt badly by deportations,” adopting a tone on immigration that was uncharacteristic, to say the least.
"You go into a farm and you look and people, they've been there for 20 or 25 years and worked great and the owner of the farm loves them and you're supposed to throw them out?” Trump said. "We can't do that to our farmers and leisure, to hotels. We'll have to use common sense on that."
The same day, Trump also posted a statement to Truth Social along the same lines, promising changes.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
Trump’s remarks reportedly followed a call from his secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, telling him that his immigration crackdown was making the farm industry uneasy.
Hours after Trump’s comments, the Department of Homeland Security instructed agents in an email to “hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” according to the Washington Post.
Since then, Trump has again reversed his decision, according to many reports.
The episode goes to show how subtle support for Trump’s deportations is.
Earlier this month, a co-founder of the group Latinas for Trump and Republican State Senator in Florida, Ileana Garcia, issued a statement decrying the administration’s “arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings,” as opposed to those with criminal records, which she blamed on a “desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal.”
“This is not what we voted for. I have always supported Trump … through thick and thin. However, this is unacceptable and inhumane. I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings—in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims—all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal. This undermines the sense of fairness and justice that the American people value.”
I recently wrote about how ICE’s behavior and emphasis on Los Angeles is tantamount to a war on Latinos. ICE is one of the least transparent and unaccountable agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, and its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) branch is even worse, spooky and silent. With no confirmed director (“commissioner”), ICE is also essentially working for Trump’s immigration czar Tom Homan, whose position and title “White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations” puts him beyond Congressional scrutiny.
There is no data about nationwide deportations, or indeed arrests and numbers of people in custody. If you have any information about this, shoot me a text message securely via Signal at 202-510-1268. Leakers welcome!
— Edited by William M. Arkin
I think it would be useful to know the details about the criminal convictions. Homeland Security depicted Abrego-Garcia as a domestic violence perpetrator YET it was actually a dismissed allegation. Trump himself was charged with all sorts of crimes but the charges were dismissed. I am extremely skeptical about someone being labeled as a criminal without knowing the details. I am extremely skeptical about these raids in light of knowing there are quotas.
We also have no idea if many of those arrested for supposed "crimes" actually committed them. They could also be extremely minor and/or a long time ago. We shouldn't assume any kind of scruples from this rogue agency. When they say people are gang members, we should be skeptical. They sent some people to the El Salvador concentration camp claiming they were in a gang when they clearly weren't. So many innocents are being caught up in this machine, and even if you are a criminal, you still deserve to have your human and civil rights respected. This is why we are protesting.
https://bettergracesandliberations.substack.com/p/a-word-from-los-angeles