David J. Bier
This week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published data intended to prove that DHS immigration arrests are “starting with the worst of the worst.” DHS incoherently calls the list the “dictionary of depravity.” But its own data show the opposite: DHS is not prioritizing the “worst of the worst.” It is running up its arrest numbers and then using a relatively small number of serious criminals to smear everyone else.
- The DHS “worst of the worst” data account for just 4 percent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests since January 20.
- Of the individuals that DHS claims are the “worst of the worst,” 56 percent have not been charged with any violent crimes.
- A quarter of the “worst of the worst” offenders had nothing more than a vice, traffic infraction (not driving under the influence, DUI), or immigration charges.
- DHS has placed thousands of people’s faces and names on this list of infamy only for minor offenses, including drug possession charges, traffic infractions, and minor immigration offenses.
- DHS also counts the same individuals multiple times in dozens of cases.
- DHS appears to include individuals who were never free in the United States and were initially arrested under the Biden administration.
DHS arrested immigrants who committed public safety crimes before President Trump came into office. What is different now is not the small number of arrests of serious criminals, but rather—as I have documented exhaustively throughout this year—all the noncriminal arrests and arrests of people with minor charges against them. The opportunity costs of these arrests are people with serious offenses are not being pursued and ongoing nonimmigration-related criminal conspiracies are going uninvestigated.
ICE has arrested about 281,000 people since January 20, carrying forward through December 9 the daily average for October when the publicly available data end. The DHS “worst of the worst” data include 9,800 individuals. Therefore, DHS has classified just 4 percent of ICE arrests as “the worst of the worst.”
Although DHS will naturally claim that these are just the “worst of the worst,” and there are still many serious offenders left off the list, the list itself implies that DHS has adopted an extremely broad definition of the “worst of the worst.” A majority (56 percent) of the list has not been charged or convicted of a violent crime, and nearly a quarter of the list are people who had nothing more than a vice, immigration (e.g., illegal entry), or non-DUI traffic charge. At the end of this post, I have attached a table with the classification of offenses into these broad categories, but I use a broad classification system for “violent” offenses that includes offenses that would not necessarily meet the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s definition.
Looking more specifically, DHS has published the names and faces of hundreds of people whose most serious charge was a drug offense, including hundreds of people whose most serious offense was possession. Many people’s “worst of the worst” offenses were nothing more than “evasion”—fleeing, resisting, impeding, or obstructing—which are offenses related to avoiding law enforcement rather than threatening the public.
Even more incredibly, 743 individuals received the “worst of the worst” label for immigration crimes, almost entirely entering or reentering illegally. How can someone be labeled one of “the worst of the worst illegal immigrants” when the only charge against them is, essentially, being an illegal immigrant? It makes no sense in DHS’s own terms.
The DHS list also counts the same individuals multiple times in dozens of cases. For instance, here is an individual who is listed as the worst criminal because he illegally reentered after a deportation. From what I can tell of his case, he was arrested by the Border Patrol in November 2024, charged with illegal reentry, then detained until the Trump administration took over. He pled guilty in February 2025. ICE likely rearrested him while he was still in Justice Department custody, so it’s possible that some people on this list were not even originally arrested by the Trump administration. Perhaps this is how he ended up on the list twice. In other cases, however, DHS even lists the same arrest location.
Repeat entries on DHS “worst of the worst” list undermine credibility
Source: Department of Homeland Security; DHS.
This is not the first time that DHS has been exposed for lying about specific groups of immigrants being the “worst of the worst.” DHS claimed that the “worst of the worst” would end up in Guantanamo Bay detention but then secretly promulgated orders to send “low-risk” detainees there, with nearly 39 percent ultimately meeting that classification according to DHS itself. It then said the same thing about Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center, even though the vast majority held there had no serious offenses. DHS said the same about Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, even though just 3 percent of those arrested there had violent criminal histories.
The strangest thing about the “worst of the worst” data dump is that, as I have detailed, the share of ICE detentions with violent criminal convictions overall is actually about 5 percent nationwide. DHS called my data “made up,” presumably because it thought I excluded many violent criminals. Yet, DHS’s “worst of the worst” data show an even lower percentage of “worst of the worst” offenders. DHS may just be struggling with processing its own data. Regardless, it’s telling that even when DHS is tasked with finding the worst criminals, it finds a lower percentage than I did.
Table of crime classifications.