The vast majority of men in ICE custody in Mass. are classified as 'no threat'

About 85% of federal detainees held in U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement custody at the Plymouth County detention center this year have been classified as “no ICE threat” by the agency, according to federal data analyzed by WBUR.

The numbers call into question an oft-repeated talking point for President Trump, that immigration agents are pursuing “dangerous criminals” and “the worst of the worst.”

Among Plymouth detainees, the percentage of those ICE classified as no threat began exploding under President Joe Biden, who ramped up enforcement by the end of his term.

What’s changed under Trump is the sheer magnitude of detention efforts — in Massachusetts and across the country.

“By nature, with these numbers, you're going after everybody: the neighbor, the grandmother, your kids' daycare provider,” said immigration attorney Kerry Doyle, who’s among numerous judges fired from the Chelmsford immigration court this year.

“By nature, with these numbers, you're going after everybody: the neighbor, the grandmother, your kids' daycare provider."

Kerry Doyle, immigration attorney

Six months into Trump’s second term, detentions nationwide have spiked by about 50%. At the end of Biden’s term, just under 40,000 people were in ICE custody — the number is now nearing 60,000.

And Trump’s promise of mass deportations is getting a financial supercharge. In the recent domestic policy bill the president signed, immigration officials got $170 billion to expand their ability to detain and deport people.

Currently, Plymouth County has 526 beds set aside for federal detentions at its jail.

As ICE processes detainees, those without criminal convictions are marked as “no ICE threat level.” Threat levels 1 through 3 account for a person’s criminal record, ranging from violent crimes to traffic violations, with Level 1 indicating ICE’s highest threat level.

The most recent data shows that in Plymouth, just 8% of the average daily population of 414 since the fiscal year started in October have been classified as Level 1.

Nationwide data shows that the trend is not new.

Researchers at Syracuse University found that as detentions increased at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, so did the share of people without convictions. By the time Trump took office in 2017, more than half of detainees had no convictions, according to an ICE report that breaks down the population by convictions, pending charges and immigration violations.

The most recent data show the percent of detainees without criminal convictions has surged to nearly three-quarters.

ICE declined to make someone available for an interview for this story.

Leah Hastings is an attorney with Prisoners’ Legal Services, a local nonprofit that has tracked conditions at the Plymouth jail. She said what’s different under Trump is the scope of the deportation machine.

“The infrastructure for doing all of these things has been put into place and used over decades and across administrations,” Hastings said.

Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur agrees. He’s a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington D.C., a think tank that advocates for tighter enforcement.

”What you're seeing today might be different in scale, but it's not really different in kind,” he said, comparing Trump's to administrations from George H.W. Bush through Obama, under whom he did most of his service on the bench.

Arthur said any person who is removable from the United States is subject to detention. And he said the 1996 immigration reform law mandates that anyone who entered the country illegally be detained.

That was “ passed on a bipartisan basis and signed by Bill Clinton,” Arthur said. “So this isn't like a Donald Trump fever dream — this is something that's actually been the law for almost three decades.”

The ICE data suggest the shift communities are witnessing is not just the magnitude of Trump’s deportation push, but the level of enforcement happening in cities and towns across the country.

“What we're seeing is a change in the nature of enforcement, from being primarily near the border, or at the border, to much more enforcement in the interior,” said Boston College immigration law professor Dan Kanstroom.

ICE’s data breaks down detainee numbers by arresting agency. During Biden’s last month in office, 62% of detainees were arrested by Customs and Border Protection, which focuses on recent arrivals at the border. In June, CBP arrests accounted for just 26% of all detainees, while ICE arrests around the country were responsible for the uptick in detainees.

Kanstroom said that explains why so many people being arrested have established families and lives in the U.S.

“The more it moves into communities, the more you start seeing arrests of people who have been here for longer periods of time,” he said.

ICE’s defenders say the agency is prioritizing serious criminals for enforcement. And they say agents are upholding the law by arresting anyone who’s undocumented.

”President Trump made clear, we're going to prioritize public safety threats and national security threats,” border czar Tom Homan said during a recent press conference. “But you’re in the country illegally, you got a problem.”

Former ICE agent Eric Caron said immigration officials consider more than just U.S. convictions when determining who to detain.

“People who came to America illegally, convicted of a murder in Brazil and became a dishwasher — well, that dishwasher deserves to be arrested and sent back to Brazil,” said Caron, who retired in 2014.

“We didn't sign up for this job to go after dishwashers and landscapers. We're going after the worst of the worst — that's what 99% of them would say.”

Eric Caron, former ICE agent

Holding non-criminals sends a message, he said: “This administration is taking immigration enforcement, border security, much more seriously.”

And according to the government’s data, the deterrence seems to be working. Homeland Security officials report daily border encounters have dropped 93% since Trump took office, while migration through Panama’s Darien Gap — the dangerous path taken by many Haitians and Venezuelans to the U.S. in recent years — is down 99%.

Ragini Shah, who teaches immigration law at Suffolk University in Boston, says locking up more immigrants without convictions also encourages people to leave the country voluntarily — not just the detainees, but also their friends and family.

Officials are “trying to avoid the full deportation process,” Shah said, “and use detention as a lever to try to get people to essentially sign themselves out of the country.”

Caron served with ICE and its predecessor agencies for 25 years. Now he worries about the marshalling of federal resources to pursue non-criminals. He said most people in the country illegally just want to keep their heads down and work — and he doesn’t think most ICE agents want to target them.

“We didn't sign up for this job to go after dishwashers and landscapers,” Caron said. “We're going after the worst of the worst — that's what 99% of them would say.”