Politics
ICE
The promise was to deport criminals. Seven in ten people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction. And two U.S. citizens were shot dead in one city in one month.
The argument
Enforcing immigration law is legitimate, and the border is far quieter than it was. Both are true, and this page says so. The question is what enforcement turned into, and what happened to the people caught in it, including citizens.
The pitch was the worst criminals first. The government’s own detention data shows most people held have no criminal conviction. A man the government admitted was deported illegally was held in a foreign prison for nearly three months. And in Minneapolis in January 2026, federal agents shot and killed two American citizens, and officials’ early accounts of both were disputed by video reviews.
1. Who is being held
On July 11, 2026, ICE was holding 65,765 people in detention. Of them, 46,436, or 70.6%, had no criminal conviction, according to TRAC, which compiles ICE’s own data. TRAC counts convictions, not pending charges, and notes that many of the convictions were for minor offenses, including traffic violations.
Of every 100 people in ICE detention in July 2026, about 71 had no criminal conviction.
ICE recorded 21 deaths in its custody in 2026 through August 23, the latest figure on its site, six of them in January alone.
2. The man deported by “administrative error”
Kilmar Abrego Garcia lived in Maryland under a withholding order that barred sending him to El Salvador. In March 2025 he was sent there anyway, to the CECOT mega-prison. The Supreme Court’s April 10, 2025 order recorded what the government itself admitted:
Noem v. Abrego Garcia, Supreme Court, April 10, 2025
The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.
The government called it an “administrative error.” The Court required it to “facilitate” his release.
He was returned to the United States in June 2025, and then indicted; those charges were dismissed in May 2026. In a separate case that April, a federal judge found probable cause of criminal contempt over flights to El Salvador that continued after he ordered them turned around. An appeals court is rehearing it.
3. Citizens
By October 2025, ProPublica had counted at least 170 U.S. citizens detained by immigration agents. In September 2025, the Supreme Court allowed roving immigration stops in Los Angeles to continue. Justice Kavanaugh, agreeing, wrote that “apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” but that it can be a factor.
4. Minneapolis, January 2026
Renée Nicole Good, 37, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by ICE officer Jonathan Ross on January 7, 2026, while in her car. The administration said the officer acted in self-defense and that she had used her vehicle as a weapon; Vice President Vance called her death “a tragedy of her own making.” Analyses of the videos by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and AP did not clearly show the car running him over, and the Times concluded he was not run over. The Justice Department declined to open a criminal investigation.
Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and ICU nurse, was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents on January 24, 2026. Officials’ early claims that he approached officers with a gun were not supported by video reviews, which found he was holding a phone; his licensed handgun was holstered and was taken from him about a second before the shooting. Utah Senator John Curtis said he disagreed with “Secretary Noem’s premature DHS response, which came before all the facts.”
A PBS News, NPR, and Marist poll taken days later found 65% of Americans said ICE had gone too far, up from 54% in June 2025.
5. Utah
ICE made 3,467 arrests in Utah from January through July 2026, against 2,116 in the same months of 2025, according to an analysis reported by KUER; ICE says it has not verified the analysis. About 27% involved people with no criminal background. Utah’s immigration court has a backlog of more than 46,000 cases, and a judge there called it “severely understaffed.”
Church of Jesus Christ, official statement on immigration
Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children weakens families and damages society.
The same statement also says “every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders,” and asks for laws that “properly balance love for neighbors, family cohesion, and the observance of just and enforceable laws.” It does not mention ICE or this administration, and this page does not claim the Church has commented on either.
Read the statementWhat is true on the other side
- The border is quiet. Border Patrol recorded about 8,870 apprehensions at the southwest border in August 2026, the latest month reported, a small fraction of the peaks under the previous administration.
- Many of those removed did have criminal records, and some cases involved serious violent offenders.
- Immigration law is the law. Removing people who entered illegally is what Congress has written into statute for decades.
- Officers face real danger, including officers who have been hit by vehicles.
The common rebuttals
“If they followed the law, they would have nothing to worry about.”
Abrego Garcia had a withholding order protecting him, and was deported anyway. At least 170 citizens were detained. Renée Good and Alex Pretti were citizens.
“They are going after criminals.”
Then the detention numbers would show it. Seven in ten have no criminal conviction.
What this means
The promise was the worst first. The record is mostly people with no conviction, a man the government admits it deported illegally, and two citizens dead in one city in one month.