New data shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New York City division has arrested more than 9,600 people since the beginning of the Trump administration — but only about one in five have criminal convictions.
In fact, broken down even further, less than 7% of those arrests are for Level 1 threats, the highest given, for people with criminal convictions. That category is for aggravated felony or multiple felony convictions.
What You Need To Know
As ICE arrests have been rising in the city, the number of people with criminal convictions arrested has become a lower percentage of the total
Less than 7% of arrests are for people with a Level 1 case threat designation, the most severe issued based on past convictions
Nearly 63% of arrests are for individuals only with immigration violations, rather than criminal convictions or pending criminal charges
The data comes despite the repeated focus from the Trump administration on the worst of the worst when it comes to immigration enforcement.
In New York City, nearly 63% of non-citizens arrested by ICE during the Trump administration had only immigration violations — no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to millions of lines of federal data analyzed by NY1.
However, just over 26% of those individuals had outstanding final removal orders, which is determined by an immigration judge that the person should be deported.
ICE did not respond to NY1’s request for comment.
The data came from The Deportation Data Project, which is a nonprofit that files public records requests for immigration data — often needing to sue the federal government for its release — and makes it available to the public.
The pace of arrests in New York City has picked up in the last several months. After six months, ICE had arrested 3,301 non-citizens. After nearly 14 months, that number had nearly tripled to 9,619.
However, at the same time, the number of people with criminal convictions being arrested dropped from 27% to 21.5%.
The case threat level designation is only given for people arrested with criminal convictions. The highest severity is Level 1, for aggravated felony or multiple felony convictions. The Level 2 is for felony or multiple misdemeanor convictions, and Level 3 is for convictions punishable with less than a year in jail.
Only 6.9% of arrests in the city are for people with a Level 1 designation, 5.2% for a Level 2 determination and 9.4% for Level 3.
Of course, despite the low percentages of total arrests, the raw data compared to the Biden administration shows each level has seen a substantial increase in arrests.
It’s reflected in the fact that there were 593 convicted criminals arrested by ICE in the city in all of 2024, and 2,068 have been arrested in the nearly 14 months of data since Trump took office.
Nationally, there have been 128,719 people arrested with criminal convictions since Trump’s second term, representing nearly one-third of arrests.
With the case threat designations, 12.2% of all arrests were for Level 1, 8.2% were for Level 2 and 12.2% were Level 3.
About 36% of people arrested by ICE had only immigration violations, without criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
More than 6,200 people have been deported who were originally arrested by ICE’s New York City division since Jan. 21, 2025. That’s more than 64% of all arrested.
Nationally, more than 280,000 have been deported with the same fact pattern, which is more than 70% of those arrested.Â