Nearly half of migrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, in the weeks after two U.S. citizens were killed in Minnesota, had no criminal charges, according to new data.
Between January 24, the day Alex Pretti was killed, and March 10, approximately 41 percent of those arrested had no criminal records, according to government data obtained by a FOIA request from the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Independent. The Washington Post was the first to report on the data.
The numbers reflect how federal agents continued to arrest a large number of non-criminal individuals even after Trump administration officials said they would adjust tactics.
After the fatal shootings of Pretti and Renee Good, which drew nationwide outrage, President Donald Trump indicated his administration’s immigration enforcement tactics would be less aggressive. The president declared it needed a “softer touch.”
Border czar Tom Homan also announced in a press conference in late January “the prioritization are going to be criminal aliens, public safety threats and national security threats.”
But Homan added that “if you’re in the country illegally, you’re never off the table.”
According to the data, one third of those arrested during that time period had a criminal record, while 29 percent had pending criminal charges. The data does not indicate the exact criminal charges of an individual.
The Independent has asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
From the beginning of the president’s mass deportation agenda, officials had asserted the “worst of the worst” were being arrested and deported. During press conferences, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would display photos of migrants with criminal records. At his State of the Union address, the president shared graphic stories of citizens who were killed by undocumented immigrants.
But news stories and data found that mostly immigrants with no criminal record were being suddenly removed from their communities.
Among the stories, a U.S. citizen child recovering from cancer was sent to Mexico after her undocumented parents were deported. A five-year-old boy was sent to an immigration detention center with his father after the man was arrested. A mother from Honduras with no arrest record was detained with her four children.
Thousands of other people with minor infractions, such as traffic violations, were also deported from the U.S in the last year.
Overall, less than 14 percent of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested had violent criminal charges, internal data obtained by CBS News found.
Many individuals with no criminal records were arrested as a result of the quota policy that administration officials had enacted.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who also serves as a homeland security adviser, set a goal of 3,000 ICE arrests per day last year.
Immigration enforcement officials were put under immense pressure to try to meet the goal, resulting in thousands of arrests of people with no criminal record or pending charges.
