Donald Trump on immigration: what the evidence says · JRE #2219
SUBJECT: IMMIGRATION
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
When other countries are allowed to empty their prisons into our country with murderers, we had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The 13,099 figure traces to a September 2024 letter from ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner to Rep. Tony Gonzales, stating that many noncitizens with homicide convictions were on ICE's non-detained docket rather than in immigration custody. Fact-checkers found the data spans roughly four decades of entries into the United States, not solely the prior three years as Trump stated, and the Department of Homeland Security said the vast majority entered and had their custody status determined long before the Biden-Harris administration. Many of these individuals are not "on the loose" but are serving sentences in state, local, or federal prison custody, and the group includes legal immigrants such as green-card holders, not only people released by foreign governments emptying prisons. Court precedent, including Supreme Court rulings limiting indefinite immigration detention after a sentence is served, rather than a deliberate policy of accepting foreign prisoners, accounts for why some convicted individuals remain in the country. FactCheck.org and PolitiFact both rated versions of this claim false or misleading for conflating a decades-long cumulative ICE docket count with a claim of 13,099 murderers entering specifically over the prior three years due to countries "emptying their prisons."