No Criminal Record, No Justice: ICE’s Detention Machine Targets the Innocent
- Kal Inois
- Sep 27, 2025
- 3 min read
The Numbers Do NOT Lie
For the first time in U.S. history, immigrants with no criminal record now make up the largest group in ICE detention. According to government data reported by The Guardian (Olivares & Craft, 2025):
16,523 people detained have no criminal history
15,725 have convictions
13,767 have pending charges
That means law-abiding workers, parents, and neighbors are now the primary targets of †®*mp’s deportation machine. Nearly 60,000 people are locked up by ICE across the country, an unprecedented surge in mass detention (Olivares & Craft, 2025).
And it doesn’t stop there. Just weeks later, ICE’s own detention management stats showed that 70% of detainees had no criminal convictions (Newsweek, 2025). Out of 61,226 people detained as of August 29, only 18,205 had convictions, while 27,428 were locked up solely for immigration violations.
The Lie of “Bad Hombres”
The †®*mp regime keeps repeating its favorite line: ICE is only hunting “the worst of the worst.” But the administration’s own numbers expose the lie (Olivares & Craft, 2025; Newsweek, 2025).
“These are hardworking people. These are not criminals,” said a former DHS civil rights official, quoted in The Guardian (Olivares & Craft, 2025). “The administration is defining ‘criminal’ so broadly that simply existing undocumented becomes criminalized.”
Fact check: Being undocumented is not a crime. It’s a civil infraction. Yet †®*mp’s DHS insists on gaslighting the public, painting hardworking people as dangerous criminals to justify a national dragnet.
Collateral Arrests: Nobody Is Safe
†®*mp has ordered ICE to arrest 3,000 people per day — 1 million per year (Olivares & Craft, 2025). To meet these quotas, ICE agents carry out “collateral arrests,” detaining anyone nearby during raids.
In Georgia, ICE stormed a Hyundai factory construction site, arresting over 300 South Korean workers. Some had valid visas. One was forced into “voluntary departure” despite legal status, sparking diplomatic fallout (Olivares & Craft, 2025).
Families are torn apart in their homes, workplaces, and schools.
Even lawful immigrants are swept into detention.
This is not public safety. It is state overreach. It is authoritarian policing.
The Militarization of Deportation
ICE is no longer acting alone. Reporting shows that Trump has pulled in the FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security Investigations—alongside local police, sheriffs, and state patrols deputized as federal immigration officers (Olivares & Craft, 2025).
This turns every interaction with law enforcement into a potential deportation threat. Communities are being policed not for safety, but for political theater and fear.
Cruelty as Policy
Detention facilities are bursting at the seams — over 61,000 people detained in August, the highest ever recorded(Olivares & Craft, 2025). Reports of abuse, overcrowding, and medical neglect are dismissed by DHS as “fake news.”
Meanwhile, the expanded crackdown has been bankrolled by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which poured billions into ICE’s detention machine, allowing it to expand capacity and ramp up arrests (Newsweek, 2025).
The truth: inhumane conditions are not an accident. They are the point. Cruelty is the deterrent.
The Bigger Picture: Authoritarian Playbook
This is not just about immigration. It is about power.
Scapegoating immigrants to distract from corruption and failures.
Expanding federal-police collaboration to normalize state surveillance and militarized control.
Rebranding neighbors as “criminals” to divide communities and keep people in fear.
This is how authoritarian regimes consolidate power: by targeting the vulnerable first, then moving outward.
We Must Stand in Solidarity
This October, Congress has greenlit record-breaking funding for †®*mp’s mass detention machine (Olivares & Craft, 2025). That means more raids, more families ripped apart, more cruelty.
We cannot stay silent.
Expose the lie: Undocumented ≠ criminal.
Stand with immigrants: Join rallies, donate to bail funds, support legal defense networks.
Resist the scapegoating: An attack on one group is an attack on all.
No tyrants. No camps. No silence.
Together, we can confront this system of cruelty before it consumes even more lives and before it normalizes fear as the law of the land.
References
Olivares, J., & Craft, W. (2025, September 26). Immigrants with no criminal record now largest group in ICE detention. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/26/immigrants-no-criminal-record-ice-detention
Newsweek. (2025, September 26). 70 percent of immigrants in ICE detention lack criminal convictions. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/immigrants-ice-detention-criminal-convictions-trump-1834569
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