🌪️ Donald "Clown Show" Trump

Statement: Kamala "Cackles" Harris "let in the 13,099 convicted murderers and opposes all efforts to find them and to remove them."

In a desperate attempt to stay relevant, the orange hellscape known as Donald Trump has been spewing his usual baseless claims about how President Biden and VP Kamala Harris have been letting in "millions of people from jails, from prisons." Because, you know, facts don't matter when you're living in a fantasy world where everyone but you is to blame for everything.

Trump has been yapping about "migrant crime" like a broken record, despite the fact that violent crime is down in the U.S. and studies show that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens. But hey, who needs reality when you can have xenophobia?

Now, in a bid to prove his point, Trump is citing Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics. "These are certified numbers," he yelled at a rally in Erie, Pa., later adding, "Kamala let in the 13,099 convicted murderers and opposes all efforts to find them and to remove them."

Here's the thing, though: there are new official numbers about the number of immigrants convicted of crimes who are in the U.S. They come from a letter written by ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio. According to the letter, 13,099 immigrants convicted of homicide are on the agency’s nondetained docket, meaning they’re not in immigration detention.

But wait, there's more! The Department of Homeland Security has come out and said that "the data in this letter is being misinterpreted." Shocking, I know. Most of the 13,099 people probably didn’t enter the U.S. in the past 3½ years; the full data goes back 40 years. Many of them aren't in immigration detention because they’re serving sentences in law enforcement custody. And a Supreme Court ruling, not the Biden-Harris administration, said that people cannot be indefinitely in immigration detention. So people from countries that do not accept deportation flights must be released.

But sure, let's blame Kamala for all of this, because that makes total sense. When asked for evidence to back Trump’s claim, campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said everyone who crosses the U.S. border illegally is a "criminal." 🙄

How many noncitizens convicted of crimes are not in immigration detention?

In his letter to Gonzales, Lechleitner detailed the number of immigrants with criminal convictions who are on the agency’s nondetained docket.

The docket has people who illegally crossed the border and were released to await immigration court proceedings. Because detention space isn't infinite, not everyone who crosses the border illegally can be detained. People on the nondetained docket are under the agency’s supervision through a smartphone app, GPS tracking, or ankle monitors.

As of July 21, the docket showed 425,431 noncitizens convicted of crimes, 13,099 of whom had a homicide conviction. Other criminal convictions included traffic offenses, assault, and robbery.

But, plot twist! The data doesn’t just represent people who entered the U.S. during Biden’s term. "The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration," the DHS statement said.

So yeah, Trump's claim is about as accurate as his hair color. PolitiFact rated it False, because shockingly, reality isn't a partisan game. But who knows? Maybe in Trump's alternate universe, facts are just another liberal conspiracy. 🤷‍♂️

Our sources

• U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Letter to Tony Gonzales, Sept. 25, 2024
• Congressional Research Service, Immigration: Alternatives to Detention (ATD) Programs, July 8, 2024
• CATO Institute, There Are Not 13,099 Illegal Immigrant Murderers Roaming Free on American Streets, Sept. 30, 2024
• The rest of the sources that actually bother with facts and not feelings.