Nigeria currently leads African countries with the highest number of criminal alien arrests in the United States (US) as of December 2025, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The data shows that Nigeria tops the list with 40 arrests, followed by Somalia with 27 and Liberia with 21, placing the three countries in the highest tier. A second group of countries such as Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Cape Verde, Eritrea and Ethiopia, each recorded between nine and 18 arrests.
The figures show that arrests involving African nationals are heavily concentrated in a small number of countries. Other African nations appear only marginally in the dataset, with three or fewer cases recorded.
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This is based on data released by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which provides insight into the African nationals who fall within that high-priority category, a group the agency itself classifies as the “worst of the worst” criminal aliens arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), not general immigration arrests. Countries with one or two arrests were excluded from the list.
During his election campaign, Donald Trump promised a far-reaching crackdown on illegal immigration, repeatedly pledging to deport those he described as the “worst criminal illegal aliens”.
According to DHS, the designation applies to individuals who have either been convicted of serious crimes or were facing pending criminal charges at the time they were encountered by immigration authorities. This means that not all those listed have received new convictions in US. courts.
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However, all are classified within the agency’s highest-severity tier due to their alleged involvement in major offences, including murder, aggravated assault, sexual crimes, child exploitation, burglary, identity theft, robbery, drug-related offences, large-scale fraud schemes and weapons violations. These are the types of crimes DHS cites when identifying those it considers the “worst of the worst”.
For example in December 2025, ICE took into custody, Aderemi Joe Akefe, a 67-year-old Nigerian national following his conviction for cocaine trafficking. Authorities described him as a “criminal illegal alien”. Akefe is currently detained at an ICE processing facility in Michigan and faces imminent removal from the US under a final order of removal.
