By the Numbers
Official federal figures on crime and enforcement involving non-citizens. Every number links to the federal document it comes from, with the fiscal year noted. We do not round, extrapolate or combine figures.
ICE Enforcement & Removal Operations — FY2024
81,312
of those arrested (71.7%) had criminal convictions or pending charges
Source: ICE FY2024 Annual Report516,050
total charges and convictions among those 81,312, including 2,894 homicides and 18,579 sexual assault/sex offenses
Source: ICE FY2024 Annual ReportU.S. Customs and Border Protection — FY2024
17,048
U.S. Border Patrol arrests of noncitizens with prior criminal convictions (U.S. or abroad)
A subset of total Border Patrol apprehensions.
Source: CBP Enforcement Statistics FY202419,242
noncitizens with criminal convictions encountered at ports of entry (Office of Field Operations)
Source: CBP Enforcement Statistics FY2024U.S. Sentencing Commission — FY2024 federal cases
34.7%
of individuals sentenced federally were non-U.S. citizens (21,304 of 61,678)
Source: USSC Quick Facts: Non-U.S. Citizens, FY202472.3%
of sentenced non-citizens were sentenced under immigration guidelines; 17.6% drug trafficking
Source: USSC Quick Facts: Non-U.S. Citizens, FY202488.7%
of sentenced non-citizens were in the U.S. illegally
Source: USSC Quick Facts: Non-U.S. Citizens, FY202484%
of immigration offenses were committed by non-citizens; U.S. citizens were 80% of drug offenders
Source: USSC Annual Report 2024ICE national docket — as of July 21, 2024
662,566
noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s detained and non-detained dockets (435,719 convicted; 226,847 pending charges)
Source: ICE letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales, Sept 2024 (data as of July 21, 2024)13,099
noncitizens with homicide convictions on ICE’s non-detained docket
ICE/DHS noted the docket covers decades and includes people held in federal, state or local prisons; it does not mean all are free in the community.
Source: ICE letter to Rep. Tony Gonzales, Sept 2024 (data as of July 21, 2024)U.S. citizens detained or deported by immigration agents
~12
ProPublica: “Roughly a dozen citizens deported, mostly children.”
ProPublica reports most were U.S.-citizen children deported with their parents (“About a dozen American kids have been deported with their parents”) plus one U.S. adult in Texas. DHS says parents are asked whether to take their children.
Source: ProPublica, Oct 6, 2026 (Jan 2025–Sept 2026)506
U.S. citizens ProPublica counted as detained by immigration agents, Jan 2025–Sept 2026: about 300 accused of assaulting or obstructing agents and “more than a hundred” held after agents questioned their citizenship
ProPublica calls its list “almost certainly an undercount.” DHS says its operations are “highly targeted.” Of the ~300 accused, ProPublica found fewer than half were charged in federal court.
Source: ProPublica, Oct 6, 202670
“potential U.S. citizens” removed by ICE, FY2015 through March 2020; ICE also arrested 674 and detained 121 (GAO analysis of available ICE data)
GAO: ICE “does not systematically track these encounters.”
Source: GAO-21-487, July 20, 2021Obama-era deportations, FY2009–FY2016
3,062,466
formal removals, FY2009–FY2016
Fiscal years run Oct–Sept, so FY2009 includes about four months of the Bush administration. The 2016 Yearbook’s earlier, unrevised figures total 3,080,195.
Source: DHS OHSS, 2022 Yearbook, Table 392,186,427
returns, FY2009–FY2016 (administrative returns 393,512 plus enforcement returns 1,792,915)
Returns are departures without a formal removal order.
Source: DHS OHSS, 2022 Yearbook, Table 39“Deporter-in-chief”
Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza (now UnidosUS), March 4, 2014: “For us, this president has been the deporter-in-chief.”
Also reported by NPR.
Source: UnidosUS (speech text)Nov 20, 2014
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson’s memo set three enforcement priority tiers, starting with national-security threats, serious criminals and recent border crossers, and directed prosecutorial discretion for others. It took effect Jan 5, 2015. Removals fell to 324,428 in FY2015.
Source: DHS memo (PDF); removals from Table 39Context
Enforcement statistics count people ICE and CBP chose to arrest or encounter. They are not crime rates and cannot be compared with the general population. Research using full arrest records points the other way. A 2020 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences used Texas Department of Public Safety data, which records the immigration status of every arrestee. It found that undocumented immigrants had lower felony arrest rates than native-born U.S. citizens in 2012–2018: native-born citizens were over 2 times as likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times for drug crimes, and over 4 times for property crimes.