In Southern Nevada, 68% of ICE Detainees Have No Criminal Record
According to ICE's own classification, only 62 of 406 pose a "level 1" threat
On Wednesday I spoke at Hispanics in Politics in Las Vegas, and I reported some data about who ICE is detaining at its two detention centers in Southern Nevada.
As of July 7, of the 406 people ICE held at the Nevada Southern Detention Center and at the City of Henderson Detention Center, 68 percent had no criminal convictions. They are recorded as “no ICE threat level,” which the ICE spreadsheet says is the category that will be used “if a detainee has no criminal convictions.”
For those who have a criminal conviction of some kind (which could be anything from DUI or shoplifting to homicide), ICE has three "threat levels.” Only 15 percent of the people ICE was holding were in the most serious category, according to ICE’s own classifications. That’s quite a different picture than what you would think from reading ICE’s own Twitter feed. In fact, my guess is that a high percentage of the small minority in “Level 1” get to star in an ICE social media post. But they’re a tiny minority.
I want to note a worry that since the criminal threat classifications are at least somewhat subjective — and impossible to verify — they will be vulnerable to ICE manipulation. As ICE becomes more defensive about who they are targeting, that risk will increase. But this is the data we have right now.
Some other tidbits we can learn from the July 7 ICE data about Southern Nevada:
The City of Henderson was holding 76 people for ICE.
Nevada Southern Detention Center (in Pahrump) is the bigger one, holding 330.
ICE has — for now — a shortage of detention space for women. Henderson was holding 16 women for ICE; Nevada Southern holds zero. But I don’t expect that to last.
While ICE reports that 276 people out of the 406 total had no criminal convictions, they report a larger number as being “crim.” What that means is not entirely clear. If it has any objective basis, my best guess is that it includes people with pending charges, but who have not been convicted. If so, these are more likely to be lower level criminal cases, because that’s who is more likely to be released from local jails while awaiting trial. This would also mean that ICE is interfering in criminal prosecutions, possibly acting as a getaway driver for defendants who might end up deported rather than brought back to criminal court.
The average length of stay in Southern Nevada ICE detention is roughly one month. Very rough — VERY ROUGH — back of the envelope calculation: This means 4800(ish) people will be detained by ICE at these two centers over a 12-month period. But that’s at current ICE capacity, which is going to be increasing dramatically which the new funding they received in the budget.
This data is all from ICE, reported on a spreadsheet posted here. Here’s a guide on how to read the data.