73% People Detained by ICE Have No Convictions | Hacker News Reader

73% People Detained by ICE Have No Convictions

cato.org

86 pointsgtirloni54 comments

When the Cato institute publishes something like this it's all over. These guys used to be considered incredibly conservative. For them to submit something so level-headed and factual which goes counter to a Republican-led administration's politices indicates that the current government is being run not by folks engaging in good faith with our existing political institutions, but with radicals intent on twisting those institutions for their own agenda.

Please remember that 23% of those with no conviction but pending charges should be considered innocent until proven guilty. If you get hit with a traffic stop, you shouldn't be lumped in with violent offenders. That's not how our justice system works.

They are incredibly conservative and also very pro-migration. They represent the chamber of commerce wing of the republican party, and nothing about publication should be a surprise to anybody.

> should be considered innocent until proven guilty

Agree if they are charged with a crime. But is being present in the country without a valid visa (or overstaying a visa, or similar) a criminal charge or an administrative violation? If I park my car where I'm not supposed to, it gets towed. There's no trial or presumption of innocence. The car is where it is.

There's a challenging burden of proof that starts even with what constitutes the ability to detain a person. US Citizens don't need to show anyone proof of citizenship due to a law that's been on the books since before World War II -- a law that was created after our legislators were disgusted by what was going on in Germany at the time. This means that for ICE to detain someone whose identity they don't already know 100%, there is a legal grey area where a citizen does not need to comply with their request. So how do they improve their accuracy? Sounds like racial profiling, right? That's because it is.

Your analogy of an illegally parked car is spurious because where a car may park is pretty unequivocal. I hope that what I've described here helps you understand that this would be like someone choosing not to tow a Ford but opting to to tow a Kia even though they're parked against the same red curb.

Good point and I would agree the burden is (or should be) on the authorities to be sure they have properly identified any individuals as part of their process.

> If you get hit with a traffic stop, you shouldn't be lumped in with violent offenders.

Yes, for whatever additional crimes they have committed.

Being here illegally, that's what ICE is after (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and they are fully in their prevue to send home people who are here against the law.

But also consider the new development with courthouse arrests, where ICE and the immigration court officials collaborate to 1) terminate an in-progress asylum case while the asylum seeker is in the courthouse, 2) arrest the asylum seeker as they exit the courtroom.

Some/many of these folks did not enter illegally and did not overstay their visa, but requested asylum at the border and were released into the US. The immigration judges are also not ruling against the asylum seeker, which would be understandable, but it seems the cases are being cut short.

I admit I don't understand the legal details, but it seems to me that this particular group of people targeted by ICE are not here against the law, and also didn't get a fair chance to complete their asylum cases.

I do approve of local police arranging the handover to ICE of convicted criminals for deportation after they've served their sentence.

First, people should be allowed to prove their eligibility and they are not being given that chance.

Second, ICE is going way beyond arresting/deporting illegal aliens. In Boston they stopped a swearing-in ceremony literally minutes before immigrants were about to become citizens.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/12/08/unspeakabl...

Yeah, people who justify ICE are really morally bankrupt and I would not engage in any conversation with them, it's a worthless exercise in frustration. They won't budge, they are probably very hateful people in real life and take pleasure in some sort of revenge on fellow humans.

For sure, using civil power, since these are all administrative violations and aren't considered felonies.

You are depicting this as some dramatic shift, but the Cato institute has always been anti-Trump.

Obama deported way more than Trump does and no one complained. Why is that so? Or at least the complaints were not nearly on the level they are now. The actual anomaly is the Biden era.

I'd like to know of any countries where a foreigner can be there without a valid visa/authorization and not be summarily deported if they are discovered.

In Germany we have a thing called tolleration [0]. It actually covers quite a few people, because quite a few people seek asylum because legal immigrantion is often dysfunctional. The difference maybe is that it is difficult in Germany to be employed or take part in life without any formal registration. Deportation is often difficult because it needs to be safe and the country of origin has to cooperate. Because Germany only has EU borders, pushing people beyond its border is pretty pointless once they have settled (they typically return within a few days). But we also have over night deportations of families (children having grown up in Germany, people having jobs) with police raids in some cases, that leave people traumatized.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duldung_%28Aufenthaltsrecht%29

The issue isn't with the deportations -- it's actually with the change in tactic, and a lot of the extrajudicial behavior. Immigration is an absolute mess, and it's one we created ourselves with one bad policy after another. I'd recommend "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here" to understand the 50+ year history of how American military and political involvement in Latin America created the instability which caused the refugee crisis -- and even created the cultural phenomena that resulted in the creation of MS13.

Change in tactics? This is as violent as it gets, the migrants being turned into slaves (paid $1 per day) while awaiting deportation, living in the worst possible conditions, possibly worse than jails.

It was common, on the left (i.e., not Liberals and not so-called Democrats), to call Obama, the "Deporter in Chief".

Democratic voters always circle the wagons to protect the administration, regardless of the administration's actions, when one of their own is POTUS. The Republican voters do the exact same thing.

A common agreement I hear is “illegals/criminals shouldn’t get a trial” as if the point of trials isn’t to figure who is and isn’t genuinely those things.

A country that is almost entirely consisted of at most five generations of immigrants is cracking down on foreigners. In some levels the US is not yet a mature country and they don't have the historical experience as other parts of the world.

Isn't it kind of logical that if you knew that if you got on the radar of the authorities that you'd be deported, that you'd do your best to avoid committing any crime (even a minor one)?

And even if that's totally illogical, doesn't it make sense that most people aren't convicted criminals, even those who immigrated here illegally?

This seems roughly in line with the US population in general? https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/criminal-rec...

The narrative this administration is pushing is that immigratns are terrorists and rapists.

Did you mean to reply to me or someone else?

Link for when flagged: https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convi...

Semantic games. ICE isn't going after people who have already been convicted of other offenses.

They are going after illegal immigrants.

Hence the name ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

> They are going after illegal immigrants.

They are also going after legal immigrants who have any crime on their record, even just a misdemeanor from decades ago. There was one a few weeks ago for example of a Canadian who has lived here for something like 30 years, since he was a child, on a permanent resident visa. As a teen he participated in some normal but illegal high school shenanigan and got a misdemeanor on his record. When returning from a business trip to Canada he was stopped and deported over that high school misdemeanor.

They are also trying to make it hard for these people to defend themselves. For example in another case they are trying to deport a legal permanent resident who came here is a kid from the UK something like 40 or 50 years ago. She has an American husband, American children, and American grandchildren. A decade or two she wrote a check for a small amount and failed to ensure enough money was in the account. She pleaded guilty to the lowest level of passing a bad check and served probation. This is the only blemish on her record.

Not only have they decided that she needs to be expelled as quickly as possible, they put her in a detention facility far from her home even though there are facilities with room much closer to home, making it hard for her family to visit. I believe I read they have also moved her at least once, making it hard for her lawyer to visit. (I believe she also may have spent time in solitary, because she kept asking for someone to be allowed to bring her prescription medicine, but I may be mixing that up with another case).

Even if you can somehow make a case that every non-citizen who is legally here no matter how long should be deported if they have any blemish on their record, no matter how minor, I don't see how you can make case that they should deliberately make it hard for them to get a hearing.

I also don't see how you can make a case that they should even be in detention. If you really think there is a risk that they would run rather than stay around until their hearing, an ankle monitor would be sufficient and cheaper.

They specifically call out why the semantics matter in the actual article, in the first paragraph.

> President Donald Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he will be “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly claimed that they are arresting the “worst of the worst.”

When speaking to Trump supporting friends who employ illegal immigrants they specifically defend that it is only the "bad ones."

> When speaking to Trump supporting friends who employ illegal immigrants they specifically defend that it is only the "bad ones."

They still feel this way because their news sources don't tell them about restaurants being raided and the entire kitchen being arrested or ICE raids on agriculture.

Problems aren't problems until it happens to them.

Yes- that's a big problem. The business owners are getting away with massive employment fraud, tax fraud, and any number of OSHA/employee law violations. They need to be arrested and brought to trial.

If you can't run a business without breaking the law (including illegal labor), then that business shouldn't exist.

I agree, however the law must be applied uniformly and consistently for an even playing field. It is not, which allows the government to “pick” winners and losers via selective prosecution.

The whole situation has been bungled so badly.

I hate how everyone overlooks the fact that most "illegal immigrants" are committing a civil offense that is not supposed to allow for any detainment like a criminal offense. And the criminal offenses that are mentioned in the study are mostly state offenses that are supposed to be handled by state law enforcement. There are a very small number of people who have actually committed federal criminal offenses that justify any detainment at all by ICE.

Wait- are you seriously arguing that everyone in the country illegally CAN'T be detained? That illegals are required to remain free, and stay illegally as long as they want?

That's a border control policy known as "no border control at all".

Overstaying a visa, which is the most common way to be "illegal" is literally not a crime and is not handled by criminal courts in the US. It is strictly a civil matter handled by civil courts (which can't impose jail time, by definition.) Sneaking into the country is a federal crime (a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for the second) and is handled by criminal courts.

I would rather no border control at all than a secret nazi-like police who are loyal only to their dear leader. We have law and order. There is a proper way to do things. Only fools think dismantling the system will work to their advantage.

If they enter it illegally, that's probably a crime (I have no idea of what it's like in the US).

Of course visa violations aren't a crime, did you ever had to fill administrative papers? What if misfiling your taxes was a crime, regardless of intent? Do you want everyone who made a mistake on their taxes to go to prison preventively? Or only fraudsters?

>I have no idea of what it's like in the US

Why are you chiming in on another country's immigration policy? You deal with your country, I'll deal with mine. Opinion dismissed

Yes, you got it right.

lmao! how can you say that when they literally just killed a citizen.

Why is this post flagged?

Simple, somebody wants you not to know these facts.

> No conviction or charge 29,075 47%

I mean, I'm not exactly pro-ICE here, but if 53% of them have a conviction or charge, that does tell a different story. That's surprisingly high.

The data does not say that 53% have a conviction or charge. It says that 27% do.

The 26% you miscategorized are people with pending charges. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

What you’re saying makes no sense. Unless I'm misunderstanding it (and I am in fact a lawyer), the data indicates that 53% of the people have either been convicted of or charged with a crime.

Yes, people who are charged are innocent until proven guilty. Nobody is implying any of those charged people are guilty.

Fifty-three is a high percentage of any population to face criminal charges, innocent or guilty. That’s it.

What do you think is the delta between "charged" and "pending charge"?

What do you think the delta is between "general population", "pending charge", "charged", and "convicted" - while we're at it?

You can make a vast majority of the population "pending charge" at some point if you take into consideration they were - at one point - marked "pending bench warrant" during the time between getting a traffic ticket and (A) paying it; or (B) fighting it.

Let's see how far we can skew the datasets, with enough motivation. And the "benefit of the doubt" that you'd reflexively give someone on not stretching the truth simply CANNOT be afforded to these people.

No this isn’t correct. A bench warrant is not a charge. Neither is an arrest warrant, but in any event most traffic violations will be civil and not criminal matters.

>"A bench warrant is not a charge. Neither is an arrest warrant,"

Re-read my comment. I never said they were.

> You can make a vast majority of the population "pending charge" at some point if you take into consideration they were - at one point - marked "pending bench warrant" during the time between getting a traffic ticket and (A) paying it; or (B) fighting it.

This statement is incorrect. A "charge" means charged with a crime. You cannot make anyone "pending charge" if you issue them a bench warrant. Nor an arrest warrant.

Charging someone is a different procedure.

Alternate headlines you could have posted...

27% People Detained by ICE Have Convictions

5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions

Alternate comments you could have posted...

95% of americans rejoice at the strong +4.3% GDP.

27% People Detained by ICE Have Convictions

5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions

That's a crazy amount of people. ICE needs to do better.

This comment looks familiar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com