More than a third of the total arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during President Donald Trump's second administration have involved people with no prior criminal records, NBC News reports.
Nearly 75,000 of the 220,000 individuals arrested by ICE between January 20 and October 15 hadn't previously been arrested, despite the Trump administration's claims that they were specifically targeting murderers, rapists and gang members.
“It contradicts what the administration has been saying about people who are convicted criminals and that they are going after the worst of the worst,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, via NBC News.
The new data was compiled by an internal ICE office that handles arrest, detention and deportation information and obtained by the University of California, Berkeley's Deportation Data Project through a lawsuit against the agency. The Trump administration had previously shared regular posts detailing information on ICE arrests, but stopped doing so in January.
The data also didn't distinguish between individuals who previously committed serious crimes and people who committed minor offenses when listing arrests of those with criminal histories. The information also didn't include Border Patrol arrests as the agency has launched aggressive immigration operations in Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte and New Orleans.
Border Patrol and ICE are both under the Department of Homeland Security, however, are separate agencies with varying missions. Border Patrol agents usually operate along the southern and northern U.S. borders, but have recently expanded into the interior of the country to target undocumented immigrants.