Arrests in the opening months of 2026 by the Dallas office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement involved even fewer people convicted of any crime than during the year before, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of immigration enforcement data.<\/p>\n
From the beginning of 2026 through March 10, more than 72% of the 5,200 people arrested by the Dallas office had zero criminal convictions in their pasts.<\/p>\n
The numbers mark a continuing trend: Since September, more than 70% of arrests each month have involved people with no prior criminal convictions. In October, more than 80 percent of people arrested had no prior convictions, the most of any month.<\/p>\n
The News examined ICE arrests nationally and in the agency\u2019s Dallas area of responsibility, which includes 128 North Texas counties and all of Oklahoma. The analysis is based on data obtained from ICE by the Deportation Data Project through a public records lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The average number of daily arrests by the Dallas office has also continued to rise. In 2025 after President Donald Trump began his second term, the Dallas office arrested an average of 66 people per day. Through the first 69 days of 2026, the office has averaged 75 arrests per day.<\/p>\n
Both numbers dwarf the office\u2019s pace of 27 people per day during 2024, the last full year of President Joe\u00a0Biden\u2019s administration. That year, people with no criminal history made up 44% of Dallas ICE office arrests.<\/p>\n
Looking at the same data nationally shows a similar pattern.<\/p>\n
In 2024, 46% of ICE arrests involved a person with no criminal convictions.<\/p>\n
The next year, beginning after Trump\u2019s inauguration, that number jumped to 65%.<\/p>\n
And early in 2026, it\u2019s above 71% of more than 74,000 arrests.<\/p>\n
Neither ICE\u2019s Dallas office nor the agency\u2019s national headquarters responded to a request for comment. Trump\u2019s administration has said repeatedly that ICE agents prioritize arresting dangerous criminals.<\/p>\n
In the arrests data, ICE uses three categories: people who have had a criminal conviction, people with pending charges but no convictions, and people with administrative or civil violations.<\/p>\n
In the \u201cpending\u201d category, charges could be dropped later or otherwise fail to result in a conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arrests in the opening months of 2026 by the Dallas office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement involved even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4028,91284,70026,102,104,10504,103,3647,3311],"class_list":{"0":"post-237210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-arrests","9":"tag-criminal-conviction","10":"tag-criminal-convictions","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-dallas-headlines","13":"tag-dallas-morning-news","14":"tag-dallas-news","15":"tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","16":"tag-president-donald-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}