Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program
The federal fugitive operations program established to locate, apprehend and remove fugitive aliens who pose a threat to the community has instead focused chiefly on arresting unauthorized immigrants without criminal convictions.
In this report, MPI finds that 73 percent of the nearly 97,000 people arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement fugitive operations teams between the program's inception in 2003 and early 2008 were unauthorized immigrants without criminal records. And arrests of fugitive aliens with criminal convictions have represented a steadily declining share of total arrests by the fugitive operations teams.
Mendelson, M., Strom, S. and Wishnie, M. (2009). Collateral Damage: An Examination of ICE's Fugitive Operations Program. Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute.