(UNITED STATES) — Department of Homeland Security filings showed that immigration authorities sought deportation on criminal grounds for only 741 individuals in February 2026, about 2% of all cases filed that month, according to court data released April 7, 2026.
The remaining 98% of deportation proceedings began on civil immigration violations such as entry without inspection or overstaying a visa, the analysis by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University found. The share was down from 4% in February 2025 and far below levels that reached 20% in the early 2000s.
The February Data points to a gap between the legal basis used in immigration court and the public message from administration officials, who have repeatedly framed enforcement around arrests of people accused or convicted of crimes. Court records show that most Deportations Ordered or pursued in new proceedings still rest on administrative violations rather than Criminal Grounds.
Department of Homeland Security officials have emphasized raw arrest numbers in public statements. That approach has cast immigration enforcement as a public safety campaign even as the court filings show that non-criminal cases dominate the docket.
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said on February 2, 2026: “While Hollywood celebrities embarrassed themselves trying to drum up hatred of ICE officers. DHS law enforcement was hard at work arresting sex offenders, child abusers, and criminals convicted of assault in Minnesota. We will not back down from our mission to remove criminal illegal aliens from American neighborhoods.”
Former Secretary Kristi Noem said on February 24, 2026: “Over the last 13 months, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump Administration’s crackdown. including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 713,000 deportations.”
McLaughlin also said in a PBS interview on June 18, 2025, later updated in February 2026, that 75% of those arrested by ICE had prior criminal convictions or pending charges. The court-record figure for February, however, showed only 2% of Notices to Appear relied on Criminal Grounds, drawing a distinction between who gets arrested and the legal grounds the government uses when it moves to remove someone in immigration court.
That distinction matters because a charging document starts the formal court process. When the government files a Notice to Appear, it sets out the legal basis for removal, and in February nearly all of those filings alleged civil immigration violations instead of criminal conduct.
The administration has paired its public message with enforcement changes meant to broaden arrests and detention. Among the most visible was Operation Metro Surge, a late 2025 initiative that sent thousands of federal agents to Minnesota.
DHS said the operation produced more than 4,000 arrests of “criminal illegal aliens” by early February 2026. The number added to the administration’s public case that enforcement was targeting dangerous offenders, even as the February court filings showed a much smaller share of proceedings based on criminal allegations.
Another change came through a July 2025/February 2026 policy memo directing ICE to process most undocumented immigrants under Section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act instead of Section 236. The shift allows authorities to treat long-term residents as if they were arriving at the border, enabling mandatory detention without bond.
That policy affects what happens after arrest, not only who gets picked up. People processed under Section 235 can face fewer opportunities for release while their immigration cases move forward.
USCIS also expanded its enforcement role in late 2025 through the “Homeland Defenders” program. The agency said it received 82,000 applications as it recruited staff to strengthen fraud detection and interior enforcement, according to the USCIS newsroom.
The February figures arrive amid widening scrutiny of how ICE carries out arrests away from jails and prisons. Reports cited a 600% increase in apprehensions of people with pending charges but no convictions, as agents relied more on street arrests instead of jail transfers.
Those tactics fueled protests after two civilian deaths during ICE operations in Minneapolis. Renée Nicole Good died on January 7, 2026, and Alex Pretti died on January 24, 2026.
Their deaths helped trigger nationwide demonstrations and a lawsuit brought by the State of Minnesota, Minnesota v. Noem. The case put Minnesota at the center of the debate over whether the administration’s enforcement methods matched its public claims.
The controversy also reached immigrants with temporary protections. In a February 26, 2026 letter to the Senate, Noem said ICE had detained 261 DACA recipients and deported 86 of them.
That disclosure sharpened criticism from advocates and some lawmakers who said the crackdown had expanded beyond the administration’s stated focus on violent offenders. DACA recipients, brought to the United States as children, had long been presented in national debate as a population treated differently from those with serious criminal records.
The February court data adds another layer to that argument because it measures formal legal charges rather than arrest rhetoric. A person may be arrested during an operation that officials describe in criminal terms, yet the government can still choose to pursue removal on civil immigration grounds once the case reaches court.
That helps explain how public statements about arrests can sit alongside a court record showing that criminal allegations form a small share of filings. Arrests, detention decisions and court charges do not always describe the same stage of enforcement.
The ICE enforcement statistics page offers another official window into that system, but the February 2026 filing data came from immigration court records analyzed by TRAC Immigration. Its review focused on Notices to Appear filed by DHS, the documents that begin removal proceedings before immigration judges.
In practical terms, the 2% figure means that for nearly every case filed in February, the government relied on civil immigration law rather than criminal allegations as the basis for removal. That ratio marked a drop from the same month a year earlier and an even sharper decline from the early 2000s, when criminal-ground filings reached about 20%.
The administration has not stopped presenting enforcement in criminal terms. McLaughlin’s February 2 statement in Minnesota and Noem’s February 24 remarks on self-deportations and deportations both framed the crackdown as a forceful response to public safety concerns and unlawful presence.
Yet the legal records from February show a system still driven mostly by standard immigration charges. Entry without inspection and visa overstays remained the dominant reasons cases were filed.
That gap between message and filing data could carry legal and political consequences. When officials defend operations by highlighting criminal arrests, opponents can point to court records showing that most proceedings do not allege crimes as the basis for removal.
Minnesota has become one of the clearest examples of that tension. DHS promoted Operation Metro Surge as a campaign against dangerous offenders, but the operation also became linked to the deaths of Good and Pretti, protests in Minneapolis and litigation against Noem.
The enforcement shift under Section 235 may deepen that conflict because it gives ICE broader power to detain people without bond, including long-term residents treated as if they were recent arrivals. Combined with more street arrests, the policy has widened the reach of enforcement beyond people already in local jails.
The administration’s own numbers also show the breadth of that reach. Noem’s statement that nearly 3 million people left the United States over 13 months, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 713,000 deportations, presented the crackdown in sweeping terms.
Court filings from one month tell a narrower story. In February 2026, only 741 people were placed into proceedings on Criminal Grounds, while 98% of filings relied on civil violations, leaving the government’s legal case for removal far less criminally focused than its public language suggests.
