Key takeaways
An analysis of ICE arrests from January 2024 to February 2026 found:
- The share of the so-called "worst of the worst" — unauthorized immigrants with convictions for violent crimes or multiple felonies —among overall ICE arrests fell by 16 percentage points under the Trump administration, compared with the Biden administration.
- Arrests of individuals with no criminal convictions, no pending charges and no identified gang affiliation made up the largest share of ICE arrests in the Trump administration, rising to over two-fifths of the total.
- At-large arrests, defined as those apprehended in communities rather than directly from prisons or jails, accounted for more than two-thirds of the net increase from the Trump administration compared to the Biden administration in "worst of the worst" arrests. They also disproportionately involved older individuals, some of whom had completed their sentences and already resettled within communities.
The current presidential administration's stated goal of arresting the most dangerous criminals is not reflected in Immigration and Customs Enforcement patterns, according to a new analysis of federal immigration enforcement data by the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Unlike previous UCLA research that examined unauthorized immigrants with any criminal history, this report, which studied data from January 2024 to February 2026, focuses specifically on those individuals classified by ICE as presenting the greatest threat to public safety.
Arrests of individuals who the Trump administration has identified as posing the highest threat — defined as those convicted of violent crimes or two or more felonies, which the researchers used to define the "worst of the worst" — did increase modestly, by 35%, while total ICE arrests surged by 200%. With such a sharp increase overall, the share of total ICE arrests for the worst of the worst fell from a monthly average of 28% under President Joe Biden to just 12% under President Donald Trump.
Following the center's report in April that found Latinos accounted for 96% of Trump-era ICE arrestees who were subsequently deported, this latest analysis shows a dramatic and disproportionate increase in arrests of immigrants who pose no known public safety threat, according to the researchers. Arrests of individuals with no criminal convictions, no pending charges and no identified gang affiliation grew to five times the levels observed under Biden, eventually surpassing both the "worst of the worst" and even the larger group of convicted criminals, as the largest share of ICE arrests.
"The findings reveal a troubling pattern of misrepresentation surrounding ICE's stated enforcement goals," said Paul Ong, director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. "The data shows that ICE shifted its priorities away from the most dangerous individuals and increasingly focused on immigrants who pose no public safety threat."
The report analyzed ICE arrest and removal records covering the final 13 months of the Biden administration (January 2024 to January 2025), where the average monthly total arrests was about 9,300, and the first 13 months of the Trump administration (February 2025 to February 2026), which reached a monthly average of over 27,800 arrests. The data were obtained through the Deportation Data Project at UCLA and UC Berkeley.
In addition, at-large arrests — defined as those made in communities rather than directly from prisons or jails — accounted for more than two-thirds of the net increase in worst-of-the-worst arrests between the administrations. These arrests disproportionately involved older individuals, some of whom had completed their sentences and resettled in communities, in some cases for a decade or more. The share of arrestees aged 50 or older among "worst of the worst" apprehensions jumped from 20% to 33%. The number of individuals aged 50 or older arrested quadrupled from 1,100 to over 4,500.
Overall, the researchers found that the "worst of the worst" narrative used to justify the increase in arrests under the Trump administration obscures the operational priorities and outcomes of ICE enforcement.
The findings, along with the center's other reports on the disproportionate impact of enforcement on specific ethnic groups — such as the weekly average of Latino deportees increasing from 2,000 to 4,600 in the first nine months of 2025 and the arrests of Asian immigrants jumping more than five and a half times between the two administrations — suggest a broader agenda, the authors said. As the researchers wrote in the new report, "the findings may also reflect broader political goals to reshape the nation's demographic composition." They suspect the U.S. is "likely to witness a resurgence of ICE activities in the coming months, potentially different in form but with the same objective of removing millions."
