Trump's push to deport criminal immigrants faces limits

Driving the news: Less than 0.5% of the 1.8 million cases in immigration courts during the past fiscal year — involving about 8,400 people — included deportation orders for alleged crimes other than entering the U.S. illegally, an Axios review of government data found.

• The figures don't include more than 400,000 noncitizen immigrants with criminal convictions in the past few decades, many of whom are being held in federal, state or local facilities.
• About 29,000 of those felons have been convicted of homicide or sexual assault.
• All of them would enter the deportation process in immigration courts — but not until after serving their sentences.

The immigration court numbers — along with the mechanics of deportation — suggest that Trump's push for mass deportations of criminals could take some time.

Zoom in: Study after study has indicated that immigrants — those in the U.S. legally or undocumented — commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens.

• Trump and conservatives have elevated individual tragedies such as the slaying of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley to claim that immigrants were driving a crime wave — and to justify a push for mass deportations.
• Trump's claims about migrants and crime were among a series of baseless statements he made during the campaign — remarks that also included riffs on immigrants eating house pets and how immigrants are destroying the "blood of our nation."
• Trump vowed to deport the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants across the country. His campaign and surrogates have said their initial focus will be on immigrants who have committed crimes.

By the numbers: There are roughly 24.5 million noncitizen immigrants in the U.S., including those here awaiting asylum decisions or otherwise here lawfully, according to the Pew Research Center.

• Immigration courts recorded 1,798,964 new cases from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, reviewed by Axios.
• Just 0.47% of those cases involved possible deportations based on alleged criminal activity.

Zoom in: Early evidence indicates the trend is continuing.

• Immigration courts received 87,620 new cases as of October 2024 in the new fiscal year. Just 640 (0.73%) of those involved potential deportation orders based on alleged criminal activity, TRAC found.

What they're saying: Trump will marshal all resources for "the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history," Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

• The Trump transition team declined to address the low number of current immigration cases involving immigrants who've committed crimes.

• Trump's incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that the new administration will "concentrate on the public safety threats and the national security threats first" under a mass deportation plan.
• "We know a record number of people on the terrorist watch list have crossed this border. We know a record number of terrorists have been released in this country," Homan said.

Zoom out: Removing immigrants deemed threats to national security and public safety has been a priority in President Biden's administration.

• Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo on Sept. 30, 2021, instructing DHS immigration officials "to prioritize the apprehension and removal of noncitizens considered to be threats to national security, public safety and border security."

Zoom out: U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Field Operations, the agency's largest component, arrested 19,242 noncitizens who have been convicted of crime in the U.S. or abroad in fiscal 2024, the agency said.

• The U.S. Border Patrol recorded 17,048 arrests of noncitizens who have been convicted of crimes in the U.S. or abroad in fiscal 2024.
• Those noncitizens could be green card holders, immigrants with temporary protection, undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers who can appeal or fight arrests.

The intrigue: The number of arrests of noncitizen immigrants with criminal convictions in fiscal 2024 under Biden represented a 114% increase from fiscal 2019, during Trump's last year in office pre-COVID.

• An Axios review of CBP data found that arrests of noncitizen immigrants with criminal convictions on average doubled under Biden from what they'd been under Trump — partly a reflection of the waves of migrants crossing the border during Biden's tenure.