Donald Trump’s newly elected ‘border czar’ Tom Homan has said he wants to make it a priority deport noncitizens with criminal histories when Trump’s second term begins in January.
This follows recent high-profile criminal cases involving undocumented immigrants, including the murder of Georgian nursing student Laken Riley by a Venezuelan immigrant who illegally crossed the southern U.S. border.
But in interviews, Homan and other Republicans have shared conflicting and inflated figures about the total number of noncitizens who Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say fall into this category.
In a recent interview with Fox News, Homan said there are “over 1.5 million convicted criminal aliens in this country with orders for removal who we will be looking for.” Trump’s transition team has said this number includes some migrants who entered the country illegally, although they are not considered “convicted criminal aliens.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrive at a home in Flatbush Gardens looking for an undocumented immigrant in Brooklyn, New York, on April 11, 2018. /Credit: John Moore/Getty Images
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has claimed in recent weeks that the number of migrants apprehended for committing violent crimes “is as high as 3 to 4 million people by some counts.”
However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided much lower estimates to Congress.
As of July 21, ICE’s national docket, which tracks immigrants facing deportation proceedings, listed approximately 660,000 noncitizens with criminal histories, including 436,000 convicted criminals and 227,000 with pending criminal charges.
This includes noncitizens in ICE detention and those not held by the agency.
There are currently only estimates of the number of non-citizens in the US. As of 2022, there were about 24.5 million noncitizens — including at least 11 million unauthorized immigrants and 13.5 million people who are lawful permanent residents or temporary lawful residents, according to Pew estimates. Research center based on the latest census data.
According to Homan’s figures, about 6% of non-citizens are convicted criminals. According to Johnson’s figures, almost 12% of non-citizens would be criminals, or as much as 24% of the unauthorized population.
According to ICE figures, almost 2.6% of non-citizens in the US have a criminal history.
Response from Trump’s transition spokesperson
The agency’s totals are far below the millions Homan and Johnson suggest, and ICE’s figures remain the most accurate available for tracking down noncitizens with criminal histories, said C. Mario Russell, executive director of the agency. Center for Migration Studies, a think tank that also supports policies that protect the rights of migrants.
Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for clarification at the time of publication.
Brian Hughes, a Trump-Vance transition spokesman, told CBS News that Homan took into account the number of migrants who have entered the U.S. illegally and evaded Border Patrol, which immigration and border security officials call “escapes.”
“Tom Homan is right: Nearly two million ‘escapes’ have evaded the Border Patrol under Biden and Harris’ wide-open border, which is more than four times the average under President Trump,” Hughes said.
Border Patrol estimates that approximately 1.7 million migrants have escaped capture since the start of fiscal year 2021. However, there are no official data on the number of so-called ‘escapees’ with a criminal record.
There were also “escapes” during the Trump administration, but the average number during Trump’s first three years in office, before immigration fell during COVID-19, was four times lower than the totals in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, according to testimonials from Steven A. Camarota, the research director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
In some interviews, Homan has also cited lower numbers, which are more consistent with ICE data. For example, on November 14, Homan told NewsNation, “Authorities have identified more than 700,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions.”
What ICE’s data shows about the number of non-citizens with criminal histories
Noncitizens – including those with a green card – can lose their legal right to reside in the US after committing a crime. Many of the people ICE is tracking are still in jail and cannot be deported until they have completed their sentences.
Data shows that many of the 436,000 convicted criminals on this list, including more than 13,000 convicted of murder and 62,000 convicted of assault, have been in the US for years. Non-violent offenders are also on ICE’s docket, including more than 125,000 people convicted of or facing traffic violations.
In 2016, there were 368,574 convicted criminals in ICE’s non-detainee role under the Obama administration, according to data published by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. As of June 2021, a few months into the Biden administration, there were 405,786 convicted criminals on the list.
Some criminal noncitizens remain in the U.S. for years because they come from countries that do not accept or limit U.S. deportations, including Cuba, Venezuela and China. Others are legally protected from deportation under the UN treaty because they face a credible threat of torture if they return to their home countries.
Government statistics show that a relatively small share of migrants processed by Border Patrol have criminal records in the U.S. or in other countries that share information with U.S. officials.
Additionally, while the data is not exhaustive, available research suggests that undocumented immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans.
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