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14,000 noncitizen murderers roaming free? Um, no.

From Donald Trump:

14,000 CONVICTED thugs and slimeballs who have committed MURDER have been allowed to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, and roam free to KILL AGAIN…And they will kill again, over and over.

ZOMG. The thing is, he seems to have the receipts. This number comes directly from a letter written by the acting director of ICE, which lays things out in a table:

There's the number in black-and-white: 13,099 noncitizen convicted murderers who aren't detained by ICE. But you might be interested to know a couple of things:

  • This number isn't for the past three years. It's for all time and goes back more than 40 years.
  • "Non-detained" means they aren't detained by ICE. Many or most of them are instead detained in prison. ICE has no idea how many.
  • The total non-detained docket for all crimes increased 10% under Trump and 5% under Joe Biden.
  • Murderers who have served their sentences and been released—an unknown number—are generally deported. But some countries won't take them, and the Supreme Court says they have to be allowed out.

That puts things in a whole different perspective, doesn't it? The actual number for the Biden administration might be in the dozens or even zero. But I hardly even blame Trump for this. I blame Patrick Lechleitner, acting director of ICE, who very deliberately omitted this context in his letter. It's hard to believe he didn't know perfectly well what he was doing.

14 thoughts on “14,000 noncitizen murderers roaming free? Um, no.

  1. robertnill

    Your last sentence was the first thing I thought when I read the true story behind this BS claim.

    The Acting Director needs to be the subject of an OPR investigation.

  2. Austin

    There’s always another James Comey waiting in the wings of federal law enforcement agencies to shit all over Democratic presidents and candidates in an election year.

  3. ProgressOne

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website gives the numbers below for convictions for homicide/manslaughter for noncitizens. This doesn't fit with 13,099 noncitizen homicide/manslaughter at Kevin's ICE link. 13,099 implies hundreds of homicides per year. I can’t explain the CBP vs. ICE discrepancy. (FYI, there are about 18,000 murders in the US each year, and about 99% are committed by US citizens. Hmm, American citizens are the real crime problem. Trump’s poisonous words imply otherwise.)

    FY18 --- 3
    FY19 --- 3
    FY20 --- 2
    FY21 --- 3
    FY22 -- 60
    FY23 --- 62
    FY24YTD --- 29

    1. memyselfandi

      The 13,000 include homicides in their home countries, and includes suspected (using the layman's definition) homicides, not just convicitions. Any gang member can be assumed to be a murderer simply through guilt by association

  4. Joseph Harbin

    CNN did a good fact-check on this over the weekend, for anyone looking for more background.

    A previous official federal report said there were 368,574 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of August 2016, under the Obama administration, about five months before Trump became president. And another federal document said there were 405,786 total convicted criminals on the non-detained docket as of early June 2021, less than five months into the Biden-Harris administration. Again, the July 2024 number was 425,431 total convicted criminals.

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

    If Trump wants to go after Biden and Harris, he needs to explain why he didn't do anything about the hundreds of thousands on the list during his administration.

    Also this:

    Why aren’t these people in immigration detention if they have been convicted of a crime as serious as homicide? Under a 2001 Supreme Court decision, the US government is not allowed to indefinitely keep someone in immigration detention after they have been ordered removed from the country. So if someone has served their criminal sentence for homicide and then is ordered to be removed from the US, but their country is uncooperative with the US on immigration and won’t take them back, they must be released in the US — usually after no more than six months in immigration detention.

    “Let’s say you have a Russian who was convicted of homicide. There’s nothing we can do there,” Sandweg said, given how Russia simply won’t accept the deportation. “There comes a point where you just have to release them.” He added that this doesn’t mean the person is “completely free” — people on the non-detained docket often have to check in with ICE or be monitored electronically — “but there’s just no more legal authority to continue the detention.”

    It's not just Trump. Like most GOP crap, it's a coordinated attack built on lies and phony information, right on time for election season. Here's the scary NY Post front page: "15,000 Killer Migrants in the U.S."

    I don't see how you can just put the blame on Lechleitner. His letter didn't come out of nowhere. They're not at all subtle about how they operate.

    ETA:
    Looks like CNN was one of KD's links above after all.

  5. Gary Goldberg

    Fun how 13,099 becomes 14,000, even apart from all the other distortions. Why not 14 kajillion? It would sound more impressive.

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