After federal immigration agents killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, White House border czar Tom Homan said Jan. 29 that the Trump administration's immigration priorities "are going to be criminal aliens, public safety threats, and national security threats."

But in the weeks following those remarks, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of people without criminal convictions increased in Nevada, following a trend since the start of President Donald Trump's second term where people without criminal convictions are facing much higher rates of arrests than under the Biden administration. 

Though Nevada still has one of the lowest shares of any state in the country of people arrested by ICE with no criminal record, meaning no convictions or pending charges, the number of people arrested with pending criminal charges has ballooned since Trump took office.

The data covering all ICE arrests in Nevada from October 2022 through mid-March 2026 was released earlier this year by the Deportation Data Project, an initiative out of the University of California, Berkeley, that publishes data on ICE arrests and detentions accessed through public records requests. This most recent batch was released in March, following releases in December and July last year.

UNLV Immigration Clinic Director Michael Kagan said that the arrest of people with pending criminal charges but who have not been convicted undermines due process and more broadly the foundations of American law. He criticized the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's current partnership with ICE — to inform ICE of immigrants booked in local jails for pick-up — saying it creates a "two-track system for justice." 

Up until early April, the Trump administration also had a policy in Nevada to lock up nearly everyone facing deportation with minimal opportunity to seek bond. Immigration experts have said this policy has increased the number of people kept in ICE detention and that it being overturned this April could lead to hundreds being released. 

"There is no innocence until proven guilty," Kagan said. "For immigrants, they are just presumed guilty and taken away."

The rate of people arrested in Nevada with no criminal conviction increased in the six weeks after Homan's pledge to make ICE operations more targeted. This has made Nevada's rate of people arrested with no criminal conviction more in line with national averages under Trump.

Additionally, people arrested since that pledge with a criminal conviction were more likely to have committed a misdemeanor, rather than a more serious felony, than before.

Criminal histories, gang suspicions

In the first 14 months of the Trump administration, ICE has arrested about 3,300 people in Nevada. That's about 2,000 more than the previous 14 months under former President Joe Biden and 500 higher than the same period in Trump's first term.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly — and at times incorrectly — said that immigration enforcement efforts are targeting the "worst of the worst." In Nevada, ICE has arrested 22 people convicted of sexual assault and 18 people convicted of molesting a minor since Trump took office.

However, about 60 percent of ICE arrests in Nevada came from people without a criminal conviction, which was slightly less than the national total. Under the final 15 months of Biden's term, about 23 percent of ICE arrests were of people without a criminal conviction.

Of the roughly 1,300 people in Nevada arrested with a criminal conviction, the most serious charge they faced was a misdemeanor in 60 percent of the cases, a higher rate than during the final year-plus of the Biden administration. This rate is the 15th highest in the country.

After the late January pledge to make operations more targeted, the share of people arrested with felony convictions decreased slightly, while the misdemeanor share remained about the same.

Additionally, similar to almost every other state in the Trump and Biden administrations, almost all of the people arrested by ICE were not suspected gang members.

"They're not ... taking away super dangerous people with disturbing violence or gang membership," Kagan said. "We are talking about breaking up families over allegations of misdemeanors and not even giving people the chance to appear in court."