In ICE practice, a “criminal illegal alien” is not a separate legal category but an agency label for a non‑U.S. citizen who (1) is removable because they lack lawful immigration status or have violated immigration law, and (2) has been charged with or convicted of a crime. Legally, immigration law uses the term “alien” for any noncitizen and then makes certain crimes grounds of removability; ICE’s Criminal Alien Program describes its focus as “undocumented aliens with criminal records who pose a threat to public safety,” and DHS’s Worst of the Worst materials refer to “criminal illegal aliens” as noncitizens arrested for or convicted of serious offenses such as homicide, rape, child sexual abuse, and other violent or serious crimes.
When a noncitizen is convicted in a local, state, or federal court, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) usually becomes involved through the Criminal Alien Program and detainers:
The “Worst of the Worst” program is a DHS/ICE public‑facing initiative, not a separate legal authority. It consists of:
• A website (wow.dhs.gov / "Arrested: Worst of the Worst") that aggregates data on selected noncitizens arrested by DHS/ICE since the start of the Trump administration. • Featured individuals are removable noncitizens who have been charged with or convicted of serious crimes, including homicide, rape, child molestation, domestic violence, major assaults, robbery, kidnapping, terrorism, drug trafficking, and similar offenses. • DHS press materials state that the site highlights “some of the hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens” arrested, with initial entries including 10,000 and later 15,000 people, but they do not publish formal, written criteria beyond being a “criminal illegal alien” with a serious criminal history.
In practice, the “criteria” are discretionary: ICE selects cases involving noncitizens with significant or violent criminal charges or convictions whose arrests or removals it wants to publicize.
Generally, these ICE arrests are closely intertwined with local law enforcement but can also occur independently:
• Coordination via detainers and jail screening: ICE’s Criminal Alien Program and detainer system are explicitly built on cooperation with state and local jails and police. When facilities honor detainers, ICE takes custody directly from local agencies in a “controlled environment.” • Varying local cooperation: DHS and the Inspector General note that some jurisdictions “minimally cooperate” or refuse detainers, forcing ICE to make more “at‑large” arrests in the community instead of in jails. • So, many Worst of the Worst arrests are coordinated transfers from local custody; others are stand‑alone ICE enforcement actions when local agencies do not, or cannot, hold the person for ICE.
After ICE arrests someone, several things typically happen, with due‑process rights built in:
• Detention or supervised release: ICE ERO decides whether to hold the person in immigration detention, release them on bond, or place them in an alternative‑to‑detention program. Certain criminal convictions trigger mandatory detention under immigration law, limiting release options. • Start of removal proceedings: DHS serves a Notice to Appear and places the person in removal proceedings before an immigration judge (unless they already have a prior final order or are subject to a fast‑track process). • Hearings and appeals: The person generally has the right to a hearing, to be represented by counsel at their own expense, to apply for relief (asylum, withholding, CAT, cancellation, etc.), and to appeal an adverse decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals and, in many cases, to a federal court. • Deportation: If there is a final, un-stayed order of removal and no granted protection or relief, ICE arranges travel documents and deports the person to their country of nationality. Some may instead be granted relief and allowed to remain, often under some form of supervision.
The article’s “Worst of the Worst” arrests fall into this standard ICE detention and removal framework; the label does not remove their basic procedural rights.
Public DHS materials give only partial, indirect numbers for this initiative:
• When DHS launched the “Worst of the Worst” webpage in December 2025, it said the site would feature 10,000 arrests at launch and that these represented “some of the hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens” arrested across all 50 states since the start of the Trump administration. • On December 18, 2025, DHS announced it had added another 5,000 names, bringing the listed total to about 15,000 criminal illegal aliens on WOW.dhs.gov, and emphasized that this was “a mere fraction of the total criminal illegal aliens DHS has arrested over the last year.” • DHS/ICE do not publish a clear, separate subtotal of arrests formally designated as “Worst of the Worst”; the label is used in recurring press releases and the ongoing WOW website, which DHS says “will continue to be updated at regular intervals.”
So, it is known that at least 15,000 arrests are cataloged on the Worst of the Worst site, but the precise total number of arrests under this branding is not publicly specified. The initiative is clearly recurring, with regular updates and repeated ICE press releases highlighting new “Worst of the Worst” arrests.