ICE Disputes Claim That Only 2.8 Percent of Deported Are Convicted Criminals

Thirty-seven Cambodian nationals, most convicted criminals, were repatriated to Cambodia on July 4, 2019. ICE

WASHINGTON—An academic group that tracks government programs says that only a tiny portion of people deported from the United States this year were removed due to criminal convictions—a claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says is based on a misinterpretation of the data.

“Despite the administration’s rhetoric of deporting ‘criminals’ from this country, the latest data from the Immigration Courts through June 2019 shows only 2.8 percent of recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filings based deportability claims on any alleged criminal activity,” the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University stated in a report made public on July 19.