U.S. Department of Homeland Security internal documents show that less than one-in-five of immigrants arrested by immigration enforcements in the first year of President Donald Trump's second term had charges or convictions for violent crimes.
The information was obtained by CBS News.
That shows nearly 400,000 arrests were made, but fewer than 14% of them had violent crimes records, and 40% have no criminal pasts at all.
President Trump and others in his administration insisted they were targeting only the "worst of the worst" in the illegal alien crackdown.
The administration's targeting of "murderers, rapists and gangsters," has not been the bulk of arrests according to the internal data. That indicates less than 2% of those arrested by ICE over the past year had homicide or sexual assault charges or convictions. Another 2% of those taken into ICE custody were accused of being gang members.
There has been no comment from the DHS.
While the Trump administration insists ICE limits its operations to immigrants with violent rap sheets, there have been several public examples in Minnesota that show other people being targeted that don't have a criminal record.
“We are seeing a repeated pattern of Trump Administration officials attempting to lie and gaslight the American people when it comes to the cruelty of this ICE operation in Minnesota,” Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement.
Rep. Kelly Morrison, another Democrat and a doctor, recently toured the Whipple Building, the ICE facility at Ft. Snelling. She said she saw severe overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and an almost complete lack of medical care.
“If any one of our police officers did this, you know what just happened in Minnesota with George Floyd, we hold them accountable,” said Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, whose district includes St. Paul.
Immigrant whose skull was broken in eight places during ICE arrest says beating was unprovoked
Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance.
But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain.
He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again.
He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.
“They started beating me right away when they arrested me,” the Mexican immigrant recounted this week to The Associated Press, which recently reported on how his case contributed to mounting friction between federal immigration agents and a Minneapolis hospital.
Castañeda Mondragón, 31, is one of an unknown number of immigration detainees who, despite avoiding deportation during the Trump administration's enforcement crackdown, have been left with lasting injuries following violent encounters with ICE officers. His case is one of the excessive-force claims the federal government has thus far declined to investigate.
He was hurt so badly he was disoriented for days at Hennepin County Medical Center, where ICE officers constantly watched over him.