Under Trump’s ICE, people without criminal history increasingly targeted in WA
By: Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez
5 p.m. on Friday, July 25, 2025
On the social media pages for the Seattle Field Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, scrolling lists of mug shots highlight people with criminal convictions. But these posts don’t reflect a growing pattern of who ICE is taking into custody.
The surge of people arrested in Washington and nationwide under the second Trump administration overwhelmingly reflects those who have no criminal convictions or pending charges, according to recent ICE data obtained by UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. The arrests are part of the administration's goal to deport one million people annually, now backed by $75 billion earmarked by Congress for immigration enforcement.
Across Washington, ICE has made over 780 known administrative arrests – those based on a violation of immigration law — since President Trump’s inauguration on January 20 through June 25. According to records, over 42% of those arrests are immigrants with no criminal history.
These people include those who overstay a visa or are found to be in the U.S. without legal status. This includes people who have had their humanitarian legal status revoked by the Trump administration, such as Venezuelans who were allowed into the U.S. under the Biden administration on a temporary visa to pursue asylum.
“Every one of these records relates to the life of a human being,” said Phil Neff, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights. The center also keeps tabs on ICE data through ongoing Freedom of Information Act requests and works in collaboration with the Deportation Data Project.
“[This data] gives us some more information about what's happening in Washington state and nationally. It also raises a lot of questions, and really underscores the fundamental lack of transparency in immigration enforcement,” Neff said.
ICE has repeatedly denied KUOW’s requests for records of its arrests over the past few months.
Meanwhile, during the past five months, people with criminal convictions are becoming a smaller piece of ICE arrests.
Records show that just 320 arrests in Washington — nearly 41% of all arrests — since Trump retook office have been of people convicted of a crime. That could include offenses ranging from re-entering the country without legal status, traffic violations, assault, theft, or murder. That’s compared to Biden’s last five months, in which people convicted of crimes made up nearly 70% of ICE arrests.
This recent shift in the balance of ICE arrests comes amid repeated messaging from the federal government that its crackdown targets serious offenders.
“Brave ICE law enforcement are risking their lives every day to keep our communities safe from the worst of the worst criminals,” said Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a July 15 press release.
ICE has also boosted arrests of people facing criminal charges, but who haven’t been convicted.
These two groups together — arrests with no criminal charges and no convictions —represent 59% of Washington state ICE arrests in the past five months, reflecting a significant shift as a result of Trump’s immigration policy. That’s compared to Biden’s last five months, where they made up 31% of arrests statewide.
Arrests in the community, or what ICE terms “at-large” arrests, have also jumped in recent months.
These arrests can target someone “who has failed to leave the United States based upon a final order of removal, deportation, or exclusion, or who has failed to report to ICE after receiving a notice to do so,” according to ICE documents. Neff said arrests in the community also include people detained during ICE check-ins and after immigration court hearings.
These records from the Deportation Data Project cover administrative arrests, apprehensions made because ICE agents either suspect or know a person is in violation of U.S. immigration law, according to the agency. These arrests include people with previous convictions.
The data does not include criminal arrests, defined as those “based on an alleged criminal offense, which may or may not have a nexus to immigration.” Criminal arrests are typically carried out by a separate division of ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, and can target crimes like human trafficking or smuggling. In 2024, arrests made in connection with criminal immigration investigations accounted for around one-fourth of all arrests made by ICE, according to an agency report.
The individual stories behind the numbers
The spike of non-criminal arrests in Washington in the past months includes people like Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, the unionizing farmworker arrested on March 25 as he was dropping his partner off to work in the Tulip fields, or homebuilder Armando Chaj, who was arrested after church on January 26. In both circumstances, the men had previously come into contact with ICE and a judge ordered them to be deported.
The arrests of brothers Jeison and Cesar Ruiz Rodriguez are an example of ICE arresting people with pending criminal charges. In the brothers’ case, those charges stemmed from a family feud and were later dropped when they were taken into ICE custody. Jeison Ruiz Rodriguez’s public defender said at that time that the Spokane County Sheriff ‘s Office overstepped state laws in the way it alerted federal law enforcement.
The arrest data from the Deportation Data Project doesn’t show everyone that ICE has taken into custody, highlighting the opaqueness surrounding some immigration arrests.
For example, records show 13 worksite arrests that occurred on April 2 in Washington. An ICE spokesperson confirmed that day that agents arrested 37 people from the Mt. Baker Roofing Company in Bellingham, but it’s unclear why the numbers don’t match up.
Additionally, on June 14, Edipo Menezes was arrested by ICE after many immigrants were given a surprise notice to check in with the agency at the USCIS offices in Tukwila. His wife told KUOW he has a pending asylum application. His information does not appear in the arrest records, but did show up in detention records at the Northwest ICE Processing Center from this year, posted by the Deportation Data Project. He was previously arrested in 2007 by ICE, according to his wife.
“If we rely on arrest figures to get a sense of the number of people taken into custody by ICE in a given day… we’re not given the full picture,” said Neff, who is also helping the Deportation Data Project mine this information.
Regardless, he and other researchers say this data is useful to understand, in part, how immigration enforcement is happening on a larger scale. Neff said a way to corroborate the increase in immigration arrests is by looking at book-in records for the Northwest ICE Processing Center.
Many of the administrative arrests occurring in Washington state end up in this facility, but people are also transferred in from other states.
As of July 7, 60% of the 1,052 people currently held at the Tacoma facility are categorized by ICE as non-criminal offenders, according to regularly updated detention reports on ICE’s website.
The Trump administration is on track to carry out the most deportations since President Obama, according to a recent CBS News report, but the pace will need to speed up to meet Trump’s goal of 1 million deportations this year.
Source
Deportation Data Project, 2025
Notes
"No criminal history" is used in place of ICE's "Other Immigration Violator" label for audience clarity.
"Pending charges" is used in place of ICE's "Pending Criminal Charges" label for audience clarity.
"At-large arrests” is used in place of a combination of several ICE categories: “Located,” “Non-custodial Arrest,” “Probation and Parole,” and “Worksite Enforcement,” for audience clarity. ICE refers to “at-large arrests” as arrests which, “take place within the community (i.e., outside of jails or prisons).”
"Arrests while incarcerated” is used in place of a combination of several ICE categories: “CAP Federal Incarceration,” “CAP State Incarceration,” and “CAP Local Incarceration,” for audience clarity.
Arrests include arrests that do not lead to detainment. Multiple arrests of the same individual are counted separately.
All data is from August 16, 2024 through June 25, 2025.
Corrections
Correction, 7/28/25: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the amount Congress had recently earmarked for immigration enforcement. This story has been corrected to reflect the accurate figure.
Credits
Story: Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez
Design and Graphics: Teo Popescu
Editors: Liz Jones and Liz Brazile
Product Manager: Lisa Wang
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