ICE Arrests Worst of Worst Criminal Illegal Aliens Including Pedophiles, Violent Assailants, and Human Traffickers

DHS and ICE use “worst of the worst” as a communications label, not a legal category. In their own materials, it refers to a small subset of non‑U.S. citizens whom ICE has arrested and who have been charged with or convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. (such as homicide, rape, child sexual abuse, kidnapping, or major assaults). The WOW.DHS.GOV and ICE “Worst of the Worst” pages only list some of the “hundreds of thousands” of people ICE has arrested, focusing on cases DHS chooses to highlight; there is no published, objective scoring system for which cases get that label beyond DHS’s description that these are criminal “illegal aliens” with “heinous” offenses.

In this context, the “120% increase in manpower” is DHS’s way of saying that ICE’s enforcement workforce has more than doubled compared with its earlier size. In the Jan. 5, 2026 DHS press release, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin links this directly to “our more than 12,000 new officers and agents,” indicating the increase refers to ICE law‑enforcement personnel (officers and agents) added since the beginning of President Trump’s current term. DHS does not specify in public releases the exact baseline year or precise unit breakdown, so outside observers can only say that DHS claims roughly 12,000 new enforcement officers/agents were added, amounting (by DHS’s math) to a 120% manpower increase, over roughly the 2025–early‑2026 period.

Tricia McLaughlin is the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. According to her official DHS biography, she oversees DHS’s public outreach, including media, digital, strategic, and crisis communications, and serves as the principal communications advisor to Secretary Kristi Noem. In that role she is the senior official speaking in DHS and ICE press releases like this one, but she does not run ICE’s operations (those are handled by ICE leadership under DHS).

After ICE arrests someone it calls a “criminal illegal alien,” there are usually two parallel tracks:

1. Criminal process (for the underlying crime):

• Local, state, or federal prosecutors handle the criminal charges (e.g., sexual assault, trafficking, burglary). The person can be jailed, tried, convicted, and sentenced in the criminal system like any other defendant.

2. Immigration process (removal/deportation):

• ICE treats the person as potentially “removable” under immigration law. Depending on their history, ICE may:
  • Remove them quickly if they already have a final order of removal, or
  • Place them into removal proceedings before an immigration judge in the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), where they can seek relief (like asylum or other protections).
• People can be detained in immigration detention during this process or, sometimes, released under supervision.
• An immigration judge ultimately decides whether they can stay or must be deported; that decision can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

The exact sequence (criminal case first vs. immigration first) depends on the jurisdiction and whether the person is currently serving or has finished a criminal sentence.

ICE typically coordinates with local law enforcement and prosecutors in several ways:

• Local criminal cases first: Local police and sheriffs in places like Starr County (TX), Kings County/Brooklyn (NY), Miami (FL), and Iredell County (NC) usually make the initial arrest for the crime. Local prosecutors pursue the criminal case.
• Detainers and jail coordination: While the person is held in a local jail, ICE can issue an immigration detainer asking the jail to notify ICE before release and hold the person briefly so ICE can take custody.
• Formal partnerships (287(g) program): Some counties and states sign 287(g) agreements with ICE. Under these, certain local officers are trained and authorized to perform limited immigration functions (screening jailed people for removability, serving ICE administrative warrants, or working on ICE task forces), with ICE supervision.
• Joint operations and task forces: ICE also runs joint operations with local, state, and federal agencies, where information and arrest planning are shared in advance.

The level of cooperation varies by jurisdiction: some localities have 287(g) agreements or routinely honor detainers, while others limit cooperation.

WOW.DHS.GOV (“Worst of the Worst”) is a DHS site that:

• Lists non‑citizens arrested by DHS/ICE in its “worst of the worst” campaign.
• Provides for each entry: name, mugshot, country of origin, criminal charges or convictions, arrest location, and sometimes gang affiliation. You can filter by country of origin and U.S. state.
• Does not usually provide arrest dates, case numbers, or links to court dockets; most entries are static profiles with limited detail.

Public verification is only partial:

• DHS does not offer underlying documents, so the site itself is not independently verifiable.
• Members of the public can sometimes verify a case by searching state and local court records, corrections (prison/jail) databases, or local news coverage using the name, location, and listed offense—but this can be difficult for common names or sealed/older cases.
• Reporting on the site notes that entries generally include only basic identifiers and often lack arrest dates or links to official records, which limits easy cross‑checking.