A tiny share of persons detained by Dept, of Homeland Security are violent criminals.

ABC has examined DHS databases on persons detained or deported. I am skeptical of the accuracy of all official DHS data. But here are some figures from the media network’s analysis.

Of the 438,537 people detained between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 11, 2026, 13,018 had a violent felony conviction in the United States. “Violent felony” was defined as homicide, sexual assault, robbery, or assault.

Consistent with past disputes over data and interpretation of law, DHS said that “Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are criminal illegal aliens”…..”We are continuing to go after the worst of the worst — including gang members, pedophiles, and rapists. Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

Elsewhere in the government’s response was a statement that illegal entry into the U.S. is a crime. That would suggest that 1005 of unauthorized persons in the U.S. who were not visa overstays are criminal. But, as this posting lays out, entering illegally is a misdemeanor and being in the country illegally is a civil violation (go here).

This in no way means that 3% of unauthorized persons have committed a violent crime. The figures are skewed by ICE depending on local jails to find persons to detain.

If one includes both reported and unreported violent crimes, about 2% of the total adult population in the U.S. commit a violent crime every year.  The figures are too gross and summery to draw conclusions about the rate of crime among unauthorized persons. But studies have consistently shown that unauthorized persons are less likely to commit crimes.

For example, using data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, researchers reported in 2021 that unauthorized persons have a lower rate of crime than do authorized persons. “We observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born US citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years. Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future.”