During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants fill the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.
Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America – echoing the rhetoric of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. For years he has lied about other countries deliberately sending criminals to the United States.
As part of his racist smear campaign in recent weeks, Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said that Haitian immigrants had increased the rate of infectious diseases in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has touted his mass deportation agenda, which he says he will implement once in power.
“How about letting people come through an open border, 13,000 of which are murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them have killed far more than one person, and they now live happily in the United States. You know, a killer, I believe it’s in their genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, 425,000 people came to our country who were not supposed to be here, they are criminals.”
The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to commit violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics on the criminal convictions of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and include people currently in prison .
The full transcript of Trump’s remarks can be found here.
In response to a Republican congressman’s request, the Department of Homeland Security recently responded issued statistics on people with a history of criminal convictions who are on a list called the ‘non-incarcerated role’. The list specifically covers people with cases in immigration court who are not incarcerated in immigrant detention centers.
The DHS data covers people who have been in the United States for more than 40 years. And it includes people who entered the country legally with a green card or other form of legal status, in addition to people who crossed the border without permission. The data showed that in July, 435,719 people were on the non-detainee roll with some sort of past conviction. (For context, like NBC News noted“According to ICE’s fiscal year 2023 budget justification, there were 405,786 convicted criminal immigrants on its non-detainee docket as of June 5, 2021, just less than five months after Trump left office, indicating that many crossed the border during the Trump administration crossed.”)
Of the people on the non-detainee roll, 13,099 had a previous murder conviction. This does not mean that all these people are walking around freely. Many are currently serving a sentence in state or federal prison or prison – so they are not in immigrant detention.
Others have already served their sentences — although, as the first DHS letter noted, “most noncitizens convicted of murder are generally ineligible for release from ICE custody.”
Trump and Vance have been lying about these statistics for more than a week, FactCheck.org reports has documented. Other media have already discussed these details extensively – as has the US government.
“The data in this letter is being misinterpreted,” the Department of Homeland Security said late last month in a statement quoted by severalsockets. “The data goes back decades; it includes persons who have entered the country within the last forty years or more, the vast majority of whom were identified long before this administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction of or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
FactCheck.org the Trump campaign asked about all these details, and a spokesperson responded only by saying that Trump “will begin the largest mass deportation in history on day one.”
