The border crisis transformed how America handles immigration enforcement.
Trump’s team rolled out a revolutionary approach to deportations.
And Kristi Noem revealed one number about illegal immigrants that left media fact-checkers scrambling.
Florida sets national standard with 287(g) partnerships
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem traveled to Bradenton, Florida on Monday to showcase what she called the nation’s most aggressive immigration enforcement partnership.¹
Florida now leads all states with 325 law enforcement agencies participating in the 287(g) program — a staggering 577% increase since Trump took office on January 20, 2025.²
"Florida has been, I think, the state that has provided the most law enforcement agreements under the 287(g) than any other state," Noem said at the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.³ "It shows that they recognize the importance of bringing individuals to justice that have [been] convicted [of] crimes against the people that live in their communities."⁴
https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1980285214015230421
The 287(g) program deputizes state and local police to function as federal immigration agents, allowing them to detain and process undocumented immigrants for deportation rather than simply holding them for ICE pickup.
Governor Ron DeSantis made Florida the only state in the country where all 67 counties are required by law to enter into these agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.⁵
Florida cities including Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and St. Petersburg have voluntarily signed on despite not being legally required to participate.⁶
The financial incentive helps.
Florida secured $38.4 million in federal reimbursements for equipment and transportation costs tied to immigration enforcement — money that comes directly from President Trump’s domestic policy legislation.⁷
Noem’s 70% claim contradicts Syracuse University data
Noem defended the Trump administration’s enforcement priorities by highlighting the criminal backgrounds of detained immigrants during her Florida appearance.
"Since January, the Department of Homeland Security has arrested over 480,000 criminal illegal aliens. 70% of those individuals have criminal charges against them or have been convicted of those criminal charges," Noem said at the news conference.⁸
That 70% figure became the flashpoint.
Data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University paints a dramatically different picture of who’s actually sitting in ICE detention facilities.
As of September 21, 2025, Syracuse researchers found 71.5% of the 59,762 people held in ICE detention had no criminal conviction on record.⁹
The Syracuse data directly contradicts Noem’s claim that 70% of detained immigrants have criminal charges or convictions. In reality, 71.5% have neither — meaning Noem’s numbers are essentially inverted from what the data shows.
Many detainees with convictions on their records had only committed minor offenses, including traffic violations, according to Syracuse researchers.¹⁰
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse operates as a nonprofit data research organization housed at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.¹¹
The organization specializes in collecting and analyzing federal enforcement data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.¹²
Border Czar Tom Homan claimed during a recent NewsNation town hall that nearly 70% of ICE arrests involve public safety or national security threats.¹³
The gap between administration talking points and detention data reveals why Noem chose to frame her statistics around arrests rather than who’s actually detained.
DHS touts voluntary departures and aggressive enforcement
Noem highlighted four specific criminal cases during her Bradenton press conference to illustrate the type of dangerous individuals being removed from American communities.¹⁴
The administration’s self-deportation program, dubbed "Operation Homecoming," has convinced roughly 1.6 million people to leave the country voluntarily since Trump’s inauguration.¹⁵
DHS sweetened the deal with $1,000 cash payments and free one-way airline tickets for immigrants willing to return to their home countries without fighting removal in court.¹⁶
https://twitter.com/KnightsTempOrg/status/1979684034314649777
More than 400,000 people have been deported through traditional enforcement actions over the same period, according to DHS figures.¹⁷
The recruitment push for 10,000 new ICE agents generated over 175,000 applications, suggesting strong public support for expanded immigration enforcement.¹⁸
Noem accused the media of "distorting the truth and not bringing the real facts" to the public regarding ICE operations targeting "criminal illegal aliens."¹⁹
The Syracuse data raises questions about whether the "worst of the worst" narrative matches the reality of who’s being detained and deported.
Florida’s participation in the 287(g) program transformed routine traffic stops into immigration enforcement actions.
A 22-year-old woman arrested for an illegal U-turn and driving without a license — a document she couldn’t legally obtain — found herself transferred from local jail to federal custody and moved to a Texas detention center within days.²⁰
Her mother paid the $500 traffic bond, but that didn’t halt the immigration hold.²¹
The woman chose self-deportation to Mexico rather than facing months of detention while fighting her case.²²
That’s exactly how the system was designed to work under Florida’s 2025 law requiring county cooperation via 287(g) agreements.
The numbers game reveals administration’s messaging strategy
Noem’s focus on arrest statistics rather than detention demographics isn’t accidental. The distinction matters.
When DHS officials cite the 70% figure for arrests, they’re talking about the moment someone is taken into custody — often immediately after catching them crossing the border illegally or during targeted enforcement operations.
But once people hit the detention system, the profile changes dramatically.
Many convicted criminals get deported quickly through expedited removal proceedings. Others post bond and await hearings from outside detention.
The people who remain in custody for extended periods?
Those are increasingly immigrants without criminal records who entered illegally and are fighting removal through the immigration court system.
Syracuse data shows the number of detainees with criminal convictions actually dropped by 170 during a two-week period ending September 25, 2025, even as total detention numbers grew by 996 people.²³
That means the detention population is shifting away from criminals and toward people whose only violation is entering or remaining in the country illegally.
Noem highlighted Florida’s cooperation because it generates the kind of cases that support the administration’s public safety narrative.
Florida law enforcement can point to convicted murderers, child sex offenders, and drunk drivers being removed from communities.
The broader detention data tells a more complicated story about mass deportation efforts sweeping up hundreds of thousands of people whose criminal histories begin and end with immigration violations.
Trump’s immigration critics seized on the Syracuse data to argue the administration is terrorizing families and destroying communities while pretending to focus on dangerous criminals.
Supporters counter that illegal entry itself is a crime, making every undocumented immigrant by definition a lawbreaker who should be deported regardless of other criminal history.
The debate over who counts as a "criminal illegal alien" will likely intensify as Florida’s aggressive enforcement model spreads to other states and ICE detention numbers continue climbing toward record levels.
Florida proved a state government can force every county and encourage every city to participate in federal immigration enforcement.
The 577% increase in 287(g) agreements since January shows how quickly cooperation can expand when political leadership makes it a priority.
Other Republican governors are watching closely to see if Florida’s approach delivers the results DeSantis and Noem are promising — or if the gap between rhetoric and detention data becomes impossible to ignore.
¹ Mitch Perry, "DHS Sec. Kristi Noem touts Florida partnership in Bradenton appearance," Florida Phoenix, October 20, 2025.
² Livia Caputo, "Florida gets $38m from ICE for immigration crackdown," Florida Phoenix, September 26, 2025.
³ Perry, "DHS Sec. Kristi Noem touts Florida partnership."
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Caputo, "Florida gets $38m from ICE."
⁸ Perry, "DHS Sec. Kristi Noem touts Florida partnership."
⁹ Staff, "ICE announces arrests as data shows most detainees lack criminal records," NewsNation, October 16, 2025.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ "Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse," Wikipedia, accessed October 21, 2025.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ "ICE announces arrests," NewsNation.
¹⁴ Perry, "DHS Sec. Kristi Noem touts Florida partnership."
¹⁵ – ¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ Staff, "Sarasota case shows 287(g) crackdown fueling self-deportation surge," VisaVerge, August 27, 2025.
²¹ Ibid.
²² Ibid.
²³ "ICE announces arrests," NewsNation.
