OPINION
The Nevada Independent reported this week that immigration arrests in Nevada reached record highs over the summer, with particular attention paid to the increasing number of people arrested who had no criminal record.
That statistic is real.
But without an equally important explanation of immigration law, it can also be misleading.
A person does not necessarily need a separate criminal conviction to be lawfully subject to immigration enforcement. Someone may be unlawfully present in the United States, subject to removal proceedings or have an outstanding removal order without having been convicted of another crime.
That distinction should be front and center in any discussion of ICE arrests.
“No criminal record” is not the same as “lawfully present”
Federal immigration law distinguishes between criminal offenses and civil immigration violations.
Improper entry into the United States can itself constitute a federal criminal offense under 8 U.S.C. §1325. Federal law provides criminal penalties for entering at an unauthorized place, evading immigration inspection or obtaining entry through certain willful misrepresentations.
But not everyone who is unlawfully present entered illegally.
Someone may have entered the country legally and subsequently violated the conditions of that status or remained after authorization expired. Federal law provides that people in those circumstances can be deportable even though the underlying immigration violation does not necessarily amount to a separate criminal conviction.
That matters enormously when discussing ICE statistics.
When a report describes someone arrested by ICE as having “no criminal record,” readers should not interpret that phrase to mean that ICE therefore had no lawful basis to arrest the person.
Those are entirely different questions.
The relevant question is whether the individual was legally subject to immigration enforcement.
What Nevada’s numbers show
According to The Nevada Independent’s analysis of federal immigration data, ICE arrested 203 people in Nevada during a two-week period from late June into early July—the highest two-week total in the dataset examined by the publication.
The Independent also reported that approximately 18 percent of those arrested during the latest five-month period had no criminal charges, compared with 12 percent during an earlier period of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Those figures deserve reporting.
But so does another number contained in the same analysis.
Approximately 73 percent of Nevada ICE arrests under the Trump administration occurred while the person was already in custody, such as in a jail or detention facility.
More than 30 percent of arrests in the newest data release were classified as “at-large,” meaning ICE made the arrest in the community.
That paints a considerably more complicated picture than the phrase “record ICE arrests” alone might suggest.
Immigration enforcement is not limited to convicted criminals
There is a legitimate political debate over enforcement priorities.
Some people believe ICE resources should be concentrated almost entirely on people convicted of violent or serious crimes.
Others believe federal immigration authorities should enforce immigration law more broadly, including against people who are removable even when they have no separate criminal conviction.
But those policy positions should not be confused with what federal law currently authorizes.
Congress has established multiple grounds under which a noncitizen may be removable from the United States. A criminal conviction is one potential basis. It is not the only one.
That means describing an ICE detainee as having “no criminal record” answers one question about that individual.
It does not answer the immigration question.
It does not establish that the person has lawful immigration status.
It does not establish that the person isn’t subject to removal.
And it does not, standing alone, establish that ICE acted improperly by making the arrest.
Those distinctions matter.
Why local custody matters
There is another part of Nevada’s numbers that deserves more attention: where ICE arrests occur.
ICE has long argued that taking custody of someone from a jail or detention facility is safer than locating that same person in the community.
That proposition is not difficult to understand.
A controlled transfer from one law-enforcement agency to another avoids many of the variables associated with an at-large arrest. Officers know where the person is. The environment is controlled. Members of the public are less likely to become involved.
If someone is already in lawful local custody and federal authorities have an independent lawful basis to take that person into immigration custody, coordination can avoid the need for ICE agents to locate the individual later.
The federal 287(g) program is one mechanism through which participating state and local law-enforcement agencies cooperate with ICE on certain immigration functions under federal oversight.
According to The Independent, five Nevada agencies currently participate, although arrests directly attributed to 287(g) represent only a small portion of the state’s overall ICE arrests.
The rise in at-large arrests therefore raises an important practical question for Nevada policymakers: could greater lawful coordination between federal and local authorities reduce the number of immigration arrests that have to occur in neighborhoods, workplaces and other public locations?
That question deserves serious consideration regardless of one’s broader position on immigration policy.
Precision matters on both sides
None of this means ICE should operate without scrutiny.
Federal agents must follow the law. People subject to immigration proceedings retain applicable procedural and constitutional protections. Government mistakes should be identified and corrected.
And journalists should absolutely examine who ICE is arresting, why they are being arrested and whether enforcement practices are changing.
But precision needs to run in both directions.
If ICE arrests someone who has never been convicted of a crime, that is relevant information.
So is whether that person entered without authorization, violated immigration status, has been ordered removed, has pending criminal charges or falls within another statutory basis for immigration enforcement.
Those circumstances are not interchangeable.
Putting everyone without a criminal conviction into a single category can obscure more than it reveals.
Nevada deserves the complete picture
The summer increase in ICE arrests is newsworthy.
Nevadans should know how many people are being arrested. They should know how many arrests occur in jails versus communities. They should know how many detainees have criminal convictions, pending criminal charges or neither.
But another category matters just as much:
Why was each person legally subject to ICE enforcement?
That is ultimately the piece of information necessary to understand what these statistics actually mean.
“No criminal record” does not mean “lawfully present.”
Nor does it mean an ICE arrest was automatically justified.
It simply does not answer that question.
The immigration debate is contentious enough without collapsing criminal law, immigration status and removability into a single statistic.
Nevadans deserve the complete picture—and that starts with describing what the law actually says.