The Dallas ICE Field Office arrested more people without a criminal history than those with convictions or charges for six consecutive months, according to new ICE data analyzed by KERA.
The data, obtained by the Deportation Data Project through a public records lawsuit, covers ICE arrests from October 2022 to March 10 of this year. The data shows the increased risk of arrest and deportation non-criminal immigrants face as President Donald Trump's administration carries out its immigration crackdown.
More than 70% of people arrested each month from September to February — the last full month of data — have no criminal conviction, but they may have pending charges.
Paul Hunker, who served as chief counsel at ICE in Dallas for over 20 years and who works as an immigration attorney, said arresting non-criminals can cause a lot of harm.
"You're breaking up united, healthy, good families," Hunker said. "That's really the cost, one of the costs, when ICE is really focused on people that aren't criminals. It's causing a lot of societal and family harm."
The numbers suggest ICE is arresting more people at scheduled check-ins, he added.
"It seems very consistent with what the administration wants of ICE: They want numbers," Hunker said. "So you're going to see a higher number of non-criminals."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told KERA in a statement the Deportation Data Project’s numbers were “cherry picked.”
“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,” the spokesperson said. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally.”
The data shows the Dallas field office arrested 1,100 people without any criminal charges or convictions in September, nearly double the previous month. In contrast, the number of people arrested with criminal convictions stayed largely flat at 635.
The arrests of people without a charge or conviction peaked at nearly 1,700 in October, while convicted criminal arrests again stayed flat at 640. The number of immigrants arrested with pending criminal charges also jumped in October to over 1,000 — up from around 700 in September.
Arrests have since come down from their October peak, but remain historically high. In 2024, before Trump’s inauguration and immigration crackdown, arrests of people without a prior conviction or charge tended to stay below 100 a month.
The arrests of people without criminal histories appears to have increased last year in July after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which made ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country.
When narrowing down the data to ICE arrests in what’s categorized as the “Dallas County general area,” the arrests largely track with the field office numbers.
Many non-criminal arrestees have a pathway to green cards if ICE would exercise "reasonable discretion," Hunker said.
"For example, someone got deported 20 years ago when they were a kid and they're married to a citizen now. I have a process to get that order reopened and dismissed so the person can get their green card," Hunker said. "I was very proud of that."
ICE drew criticism from immigrant advocates in Dallas last week for the removal order of Omar Salazar. He was brought to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 11 years old, graduated from SMU and had no criminal history before he was stopped for a traffic violation by Lubbock police while driving to visit his girlfriend — now his wife — in August.
He was arrested by ICE and spent seven months at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility before an immigration judge shut down his bid to stay in the country last week. He will return to Mexico.
Approval of Trump’s immigration policies started off at 46% when he was elected for a second time, according to Reuters/Ipsos polls. But as of February approval has dropped to 38%, and disapproval of his immigration policies is at 55%.
Trump's immigration policies may have gone too far for many people, said James Hollifield, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University who has studied immigration for decades.
"This immigration crackdown is going continue to roil the economy, it's going to continue to roil American politics," Hollifield said.
Hollifield added the administration's aggressive push to target non-white immigrants has added fuel to that criticism.
“The Trump administration has not tried to hide the fact that they see the United States as a country that has become far too multicultural,” Hollifield said. “Clearly there's a very strong ethno-national, if not an ethno-racial, theme to these policies.”
Dylan Duke is KERA's Breaking News Reporter. Got a tip? Email Dylan Duke at dduke@kera.org.
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