To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new statistics on immigrants and murder

Former President Donald Trump completely distorts new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump falsely claimed on Friday and Saturday that the statistics specifically related to felons who entered the U.S. during the Biden-Harris administration; In reality, the numbers are criminals who entered the United States over several decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics were specifically about people now living freely in the United States; The numbers actually include people currently in jails and prisons serving sentences.

“Kamala should cancel her press conference immediately because it was just announced that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our country during her three and a half year tenure as border czar,” Trump wrote in a post on Friday, the day Harris visited the southern border in Arizona. Harris “allowed nearly 14,000 MURDERERS to move freely and openly throughout our country,” Trump wrote in another post Friday. They “walk free to KILL AGAIN,” he wrote on Saturday, sharpening his rhetoric.

Facts first: Trump’s claims are false on two counts. Firstly, the Statistics he was referring to This is not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. Rather, these statistics are non-citizens who entered the country under any administration, including Trump’s; were convicted of a crime at some point, usually after arriving in the United States; and are now living in the U.S. while listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “do-not-detain list” — where some have been listed for years, including while Trump was president, because their country of citizenship won’t allow the U.S. to deport them back there . Second, ICE’s list of “non-detained” individuals includes individuals who are still serving prison sentences for their crimes; They are on the list because they are not specifically being held in immigration detention.

The new statistics, released by ICE this week in a letter to a Republican congressman, say that as of July 21, 2024, there were a total of 425,431 non-detained criminals on the list, including 13,099 people with murder convictions.

The statistics have been cited by Trump and various Republican lawmakers and right-wing commentators as alarming evidence of Harris’ alleged mismanagement of immigration policy. But aside from exaggerating her role in the file—she was never actually “border tsarina”—many conversations also inaccurately described what the statistics show.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in an email Saturday: “The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; This includes people who have entered the country in the last 40 years or more and whose custody decisions were largely made long before this administration. This includes many who are under the jurisdiction of, or currently incarcerated by, federal, state or local law enforcement agencies.”

It’s not clear how many of the 13,099 people with murder convictions who were on ICE’s non-detained list as of July 21 are currently incarcerated in jails and prisons. Separately, John Sandweg, a lawyer who served as acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, said in an interview Saturday that it was “100% wrong” to say that everyone on the list of non-detained murder offenders during Harris’ term in office came to the USA. Vice Presidency. Sandweg added, “These are undoubtedly people who have entered the United States for an extended period of time.” …Many of them have probably been on the list for 20 years where the United States has simply failed to deport them .”

CNN could not immediately find public statistics on how many people with criminal convictions were on the non-incarcerated list during Trump’s presidency. But there are public statistics from just before and after his presidency — and those statistics, which we will discuss later in this article, make clear that Trump, too, had a non-incarcerated record that included hundreds of thousands of people with criminal convictions.

A Supreme Court decision requires ICE to release some criminals

Trump’s posts left the impression that the perpetrators of the murders who were not imprisoned had been convicted of murder abroad but were still allowed to cross the US border and live freely in this country. In reality, public data makes clear that the overwhelming majority of people with criminal convictions who are not incarcerated have been convicted in the U.S., as Sandweg and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council who supports immigration, both say said CNN.

Why aren’t these people in immigration detention if they were convicted of a crime as serious as murder? Under a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the U.S. government is not allowed to hold someone indefinitely in immigration detention after they have been ordered removed from the country. So if someone has served their sentence for murder and is then ordered to be expelled from the US, but their country does not cooperate with the US on immigration and does not take them back, they must be released in the US – usually after the deadline more than six months in immigration detention.

“Let’s say you have a Russian who was convicted of murder. There’s nothing we can do,” said Sandweg, considering that Russia simply wouldn’t accept the deportation. “There comes a point where you just have to let them go.” He added that this doesn’t mean the person is “completely free” — people who aren’t incarcerated often have to report to ICE or be monitored electronically – “but there is simply no longer any legal authority to continue detention.”

Sandweg added: “ICE, of course, doesn’t voluntarily say, ‘Okay, people convicted of murder, you’re not a priority.’ … We have a man who has been convicted of murder and we strongly prefer not to release him onto the streets.”

Reichlin-Melnick, who noted on social media Saturday that the non-incarcerated list includes people in jails and prisons, wrote on social media Friday: “Anyone on the non-incarcerated list with a conviction is on murder charges, has likely been in the country for decades, has served a full sentence, and cannot be deported because they come from a country that restricts deportations from the United States.”

Reichlin-Melnick continued, “ICE’s list of non-detained individuals includes others who have serious criminal histories and who were able to obtain some form of protection and relief from deportation after completing their sentences.” They are now legal here, but remain on the list and must report to ICE regularly.”

The list of convicted felons on the non-detained list includes both people who crossed the border illegally and people who entered the U.S. legally, such as with a visa or green card, and committed a crime there and were placed in deportation proceedings or a deportation order was issued.

What the numbers show

The non-incarcerated list is not a new invention of the Biden-Harris administration. In fact, even during the Trump presidency, hundreds of thousands of people with criminal convictions remained on the non-incarcerated list.

A reporter from Fox News, the right-wing outlet whose reporting on these statistics Trump has repeatedly promoted on Friday, noted on social media Friday evening that “not all of these criminals invaded during the Biden administration as some claim” and that “Some of these criminals go back many years in various administrations.”

According to a previous official federal report, a total of 368,574 convicted felons were on the non-incarcerated offender list as of August 2016 under the Obama administration, about five months before Trump became president. And another federal document says that as of early June 2021, less than five months into the Biden-Harris administration, a total of 405,786 convicted felons were on the non-incarcerated list. Here too, the number in July 2024 was a total of 425,431 convicted criminals.

In other words, the list grew by about 10% between August 2016 and June 2021 — a roughly five-year period that spanned the four-year Trump administration — and then grew by another about 5% during the three-plus years under Biden. Harris administration between June 2021 and July 2024.

Because official information on non-incarcerated people with criminal convictions has been released only sporadically and the dates do not match the start and end dates of the presidential administrations, it is impossible to say to what extent the increase occurred under the Trump administration compared to how a lot happened in the final months of the Obama administration and the first months of the Biden-Harris administration.

Regardless, there is no basis for saying, as Trump repeatedly did on Friday, that all people convicted of murder came on the record during the Biden-Harris administration — and the numbers show that “the record has certainly grown under the Trump administration,” Sandweg said. (To be fair, he added that Trump has faced the same persistent problems with uncooperative countries as other presidents.)

Crimes committed by non-incarcerated individuals in July 2024 ranged from the most serious offenses such as homicide and sexual assault to “gambling,” “alcohol,” and “obscenity.” The conviction categories with the highest numbers of non-incarcerated people were “traffic offenses” (77,074), “assault” (62,231), “dangerous drugs” (56,533) and “immigration” (51,933).

CNN could not immediately find public data on the number of people with murder convictions who were on the non-incarcerated list in recent years, including during the Trump administration.

It is clear that the in total The number of people not incarcerated, including those without criminal convictions, has skyrocketed during the Biden-Harris administration. (There are numerous reasons why people can end up on the list; we won’t go into those here.) According to ICE, the list is down to about 6, down from about 3.3 million in fiscal year 2020, the last full fiscal year under Trump .2 million increased million in fiscal year 2023.

Harris critics have the right to point to this real increase. However, her presidential candidate criticizes her dishonestly.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this article.

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