Federal immigration agents arrested more than 280 people across Ohio in six days, calling it a strike against the 'worst of the worst,' but data shows fewer than 7% of those detained had any criminal conviction at all.
Operation Buckeye, launched on 16 December 2025 and running through 21 December, was touted by the Department of Homeland Security as a targeted crackdown on violent criminals. ICE publicised ten individuals by name as evidence of its mission, profiling convictions for drug trafficking, firearms offences, and assault. Analysis of the operation's full arrest data by the Deportation Data Project, a joint initiative of UC Berkeley Law School and UCLA that obtains individual-level ICE arrest records through Freedom of Information Act requests, tells a considerably different story.
