Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024
Did the Biden-Harris administration let more than 400,000 people convicted of crimes enter the US?
New data cited by former President Donald Trump count the number of noncitizens convicted of crimes who entered the U.S. over roughly 40 years, not only during the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump claimed Sept. 28, 2024, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, that Vice President Kamala Harris “let in 425,431 people convicted of” crimes.
That’s the number of noncitizens in the U.S. who were convicted of crimes before or after arriving in the country and who are not detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE said.
They include 13,099 people whose most serious conviction was for homicide, 15,811 for sexual assault, 10,031 for robbery and 62,231 for assault.
A Homeland Security Department spokesperson told reporters that the vast majority of the noncitizens entered the U.S. before the Biden administration, some of whom are in jail or prison.
Undocumented immigrants are not more likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes, research shows.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- LiveNOW from FOX FULL SPEECH: Trump speaks on immigration in battleground Wisconsin | LiveNOW from FOX
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Letter to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales
- CNN Fact check: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide
- Washington Post How Trump is distorting immigration and crime data in new attacks on Harris
- Associated Press ICE numbers cited by Trump, other Republicans being misconstrued. Here's what they show
- Wisconsin Watch Are undocumented immigrants at border more apt to commit crime?
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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