The category of what could be considered a criminal conviction is too broad, Kagan noted, and doesn’t distinguish between crime like low-level drug possession or a Class-A felony such as murder. 

The ambiguity plays on the “rhetoric casting all immigrants as if they are Class-A felons,” he said.

The administration’s implementation of its crackdown “makes no distinction between a homicide conviction and trespass,” Kagan said. “I think to meaningfully talk about this the way normal people would think of it, you’d need to know what kind of crime” the people being arrested have been accused of, “and they don’t provide that data.”

Another lingering question is how old some of these convictions are, Haseebullah said. 

There have been cases where people are being swept up on decades-old convictions. 

Haseebullah said he was informed of an arrest and a conviction for a DUI that occurred in 1990.

Another 270 cases in the data are categorized as immigration violations. The data doesn’t provide any further information on those violations. 

Two systems of justice

The increased immigration enforcement is not only sweeping more people into deportation, but also created two systems of justice, Kagan said.

For a U.S. citizen, if they are arrested for an offense like DUI or low-level drug possession, they would have their day in court where they are innocent until proven guilty. 

Immigrants will never face trial and instead will “just be handed over to ICE.” 

The initial arrest “is just the front end of the deportation pipeline,” Kagan said. “We find, anecdotally, with our cases, some of them have no criminal record. Some of our clients and prospective clients were arrested on something like a DUI.”

For those who could be found guilty and convicted of a crime, “they may actually not face the punishment that a citizen would face,” Kagan said. 

The system makes ICE a “getaway driver” for cases that could normally carry serious prison time. 

Local police at the ‘front end’ of deportation system

The largest number of immigration arrests in Nevada last year — more than 1,500 —  were people who were already incarcerated by state and local law enforcement, according to the  Deportation Data Project. 

Clark County Detention Center accounted for 633 of the arrests through Oct. 15. There were 140 immigration arrests at the jail in 2024.

“That means that basically Las Vegas (Metropolitan Police Department) and other police departments are the front end of the deportation system,” Kagan said. 

The data only found one instance of law enforcement complying with 287(g) agreement, by which local authorities help ICE holding people in custody after their release.

LVMPD ended its 287(g) involvement in 2019 but authorized a new agreement in summer 2025. The new agreement is likely not yet reflected in the available data, Haseebullah noted. 

Laken Riley Act one year later

Trump’s focus on carrying out more immigration enforcement by detaining and deporting was part of a campaign promise. The Laken Riley Act, which he signed into law during his first month of office and touted as part of his fulfillment of that promise, was a mechanism that critics warned would give the administration more leeway to detain more immigrants by depriving them of their due process rights.

The legislation allowed for undocumented immigrants arrested or charged with crimes like shoplifting, theft and larceny to be detained even if there isn’t a conviction.