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The Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, has been repeating the misleading claim that there are “over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal records walking the streets of this nation.”
That number includes legal immigrants, not just those who entered the country illegally; about a third of them have only been charged, not convicted; and it’s unclear how many of them have been, or currently are, incarcerated. The figure also includes people who entered the country over the last several decades.
Homan made the claim on July 12, at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida, and twice on July 7, including in an appearance on Fox News, which reported that new funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will enable the current force of 5,000 agents to triple to 15,000. There, Homan said, “This is going to make this community safer. … We’ve got over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal records walking the streets of this nation. With this plus up, we can take them into custody and remove them quicker.”
The White House told us that Homan’s claim was based on data from a 2024 letter from then Department of Homeland Security Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner to Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas who had requested information on the number of noncitizens on the ICE docket who had been convicted or charged with a crime.
The data showed that, as of July 21, 2024, “nearly 650,000 criminal aliens were on the [Non-Detained Docket],” a White House spokeswoman told us, referring to the list of noncitizens who have been charged with a crime but are not in ICE custody.
But there are important caveats missing from Homan’s claim.
Of the total 647,572 noncitizens with criminal histories who were listed as being “non-detained” as of July 2024, 126,343 — or, about 20% — had “traffic offenses.” Another 92,075 had “immigration” offenses. So, at least a third of the total did not have violent criminal histories.
In comparison, 14,944 were listed as having “homicide” charges; 20,061 were listed as having “sexual assault” charges; 105,146 had “assault” charges; 30,631 had “larceny” charges; and 21,106 had “fraudulent activities” charges.
Not all of those listed in the 2024 data had been convicted, though. Of the 647,572 total, 222,141 — or 33% — had been only charged. It’s unclear how many of those pending cases ended in convictions.
It’s also important to note that the data doesn’t distinguish between immigrants who crossed the border illegally, immigrants who overstayed their visas, and immigrants who are in the country with documentation.
“The non-detained docket includes not just unauthorized immigrants but green-card holders and noncitizens on long-term non-immigrant visas who have made themselves removable by virtue of a criminal conviction,” Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, told us when we wrote about this data last year.
Lechleitner’s letter was sent in September, and President Donald Trump, who was campaigning at the time, distorted the data, falsely claiming that then Vice President Kamala Harris “let in 13,099 convicted murderers.” More recently, Trump has repeatedly used the figure “11,888 murderers,” though he appears to be citing the same data.
We asked the White House why the number is different, but we didn’t get a response to that question. Instead, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told us in an emailed statement, “Joe Biden let thousands upon thousands of violent criminal illegal aliens into American communities including murderers, rapists, gang members, and other violent criminals. President Trump will deport them all.”
When we wrote about Trump’s claims in September, DHS told us that the figures weren’t just for recent immigrants, but included people who entered the country over the last 40 years or more.
And DHS said in a statement at the time that the data “also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.” So, the 647,572 people on the list were not being detained by ICE, but some number of them were in the custody of state, local, or other federal authorities. We asked DHS last year, and again this week, how many were in the custody of other agencies, but we didn’t receive a response.
Also, given that the data cover several decades, “[i]t would be worth noting that people with criminal convictions who are not in custody have, for the most part presumably, served whatever sentence was imposed on them,” Mittelstadt told us in an email last week.
It’s also possible that some of them have been deported.
Since the Trump administration has put an emphasis on deporting immigrants with criminal backgrounds, we asked DHS for updated figures. The department didn’t respond to our request for that data, but a spokesperson provided a statement that said Secretary Kristi Noem was using ICE to “target the worst of the worst.”
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