Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on immigration: what the evidence says · JRE #2461
SUBJECT: IMMIGRATION
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
70% of the people that they've arrested have criminal records. What the Democrats are always saying is only 14% of them have been convicted of a violent crime.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Kennedy's two figures echo a real, ongoing dispute between the Trump administration and independent analysts over how to characterize ICE arrest data. DHS's own January 20, 2026 statement said '70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or charged with a crime in the U.S.,' and border czar Tom Homan has cited the same '60% to 70%' range; Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in a January 18, 2026 CBS interview, used the 70% figure but described it specifically as violent crimes, a framing CBS immediately disputed. Independent analysis by FactCheck.org (using Deportation Data Project records covering Trump's first year) found that arrestees with either a conviction or a pending charge, of any kind, made up about 66%, which the administration rounds to 70%; on a snapshot basis, PolitiFact found roughly half of the currently detained population and about 64% of everyone detained since January 2025 had a conviction or pending charge. On the violent-crime-specific figure, an internal DHS document reported by CBS News shows about 13.9% of arrestees over Trump's first year had charges or convictions for violent offenses (homicide, robbery, sexual assault, kidnapping, arson), closely matching the '14%' Kennedy attributes to Democrats; separate analyses by the Cato Institute (about 5%) and the New York Times (about 7%) put the violent-conviction share even lower. So Kennedy's 14% figure is roughly consistent with independent reporting on violent crime specifically, but his 70% figure conflates two different things: it is a defensible round number for 'any criminal charge or conviction' (matching DHS's own framing and FactCheck.org's 66%), not for violent crime, despite Kennedy (following Noem's ambiguous wording) placing it in contrast with a violent-crime statistic as though both describe the same category. Independent tracking also shows the share of arrestees with no criminal record or charges at all has been rising through the year, from about 22% in Trump's first three months to about 43% by January 2026, undercutting the administration's 'worst of the worst' framing.