ICE Dockets 15,272 Non-Citizens With Homicide Convictions or Charges.
Posted by Ed Folsom, September 30, 2024.
(Photo, Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Last week, Patrick J. Lechleitner, Deputy Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent a letter to the U.S. House of Representatives responding to their request for information. The letter received some publicity for the number of non-citizens that it disclosed are either convicted of crimes or facing criminal charges but are not detained by ICE, even though ICE has proceedings pending against them. The numbers were current as of July 21, 2024.
For instance, there were:
Homicide — 14,944 non-citizens on the ICE docket not detained by ICE, 13,099 of whom have homicide convictions and another 1,845 with pending homicide charges.
Sexual Assault –20,061 non-citizens on the ICE docket not detained by ICE, 15,811 of whom have sexual assault convictions and another 4,250 with pending sexual assault charges.
Assault – 105,146 non-citizens on the ICE docket not detained by ICE, 62,231 of whom have assault convictions and another 42,915 with pending assault charges.
Over the past several years under the Biden administration, illegal entries to the U.S. have risen to all-time highs. From January of 2021 through May 22, 2024, there were more than 9.5 million border encounters between agents of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and people who entered the U.S. illegally — 7.8 million of them at the southwest border. In addition, there were nearly 2 million illegal entries by “known gotaways,” who managed to evade direct encounters with Customs and Border Patrol agents after they were observed entering illegally.
According to Pew Research, the foreign-born population of the U.S. increased by 1.6 million from 2022 to 2023 alone, with the population of unlawful immigrants coming in at 11 million out of a total non-citizen U.S. population of 24.4 million. That means unlawful immigrants comprise 45% of the entire population of non-citizens living in the U.S.
People who are concerned that lax border enforcement policies are allowing dangerous criminals into the U.S. are frequently told that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than people born here – as if that should end all inquiry (“This one goes to eleven.” “I was raised a middle-class kid.”). We are repeatedly told that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens as part of a broad effort to portray immigrants as an inherently noble class. Advocates of unfettered immigration weave a fairy tale that portrays everyone flooding across the U.S. border as a dreamy dreamer, dreaming the American dream. People who object to the flood of gate crashers are cast as deplorable white supremacists who favor Christian nationalist fascism.
But inherent nobility aside, it should clearly be true that people who immigrate legally to the U.S. commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born population. After all, a chief point of having an immigration system is to weed out those who would be a net detriment, especially people with a propensity to commit violent crimes. A native-born population is not subject to weeding-out by vetting – we’re stuck with native-born violent criminals.
Also, people who make it through the vetting process and don’t want to get tossed out of the country realize that committing crimes once they are in can get them kicked out, so they tend to behave accordingly. This is especially true of people who intend to eventually apply for citizenship.
So, yes, in any country that vets people through an immigration system, legal immigrants ought to commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born population. But does that mean anything with respect to illegal immigration? Does that mean it’s illegitimate to be deeply concerned about lax border enforcement policies; 10-12 million illegal entries to the U.S. since January of 2021; and violent crimes committed in the U.S. by foreign gate crashers who can only commit those crimes here because they were able to enter and stay here illegally in the first place?
Back to the numbers in Deputy ICE Director Lechleitner’s recent letter to Congress: Is it overblown to be deeply troubled by 14,944 un-detained non-citizens on ICE dockets, 13,099 of whom have been convicted of homicide and the other 1,845 of whom have pending homicide charges? Let’s explore the question by digging into the numbers a little.
Pew Research tells us there were 47.8 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. in 2023 and that 49% of them, 23.4 million, are naturalized. That leaves 24.4 million foreign-born people living in the U.S. in 2023 who were not naturalized — in other words, who are non-citizens. Of the 24.4 million non-citizens, 11 million are here in violation of U.S. immigration laws and 13.4 million are here legally.
When the pro-lax border enforcement crowd lectures us that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the native-born, do they base their assessment on the crime rate for the entire foreign-born U.S. population of 47.8 million, including naturalized citizens? Or do they mean to tell us that the 11 million people who are here illegally commit crimes at a rate lower than people born in the U.S. too? How about homicides? Aren’t homicides kind of a big deal?
Those homicide numbers seem very significant. Are they?
The numbers in Deputy ICE Director Lechleitner’s letter include the number of non-citizens who are detained by ICE for criminal convictions or pending charges along with those who have been convicted or face charges but who are not detained by ICE. Altogether there are 15,272 non-citizens on the ICE docket, detained and un-detained by ICE, who are either convicted of homicide or are currently charged with homicide. Of those, 13,376 are convicted and 1,896 have a pending charge.
Viewed against the backdrop of the entire non-citizen U.S. population, that means 15,272 out of 24.2 million were either convicted of homicide or faced a pending homicide charge on July 21, 2024. That’s a rate of 62.59 out of every 100,000 non-citizens in the U.S.
Now, we don’t know how many of those people were convicted of homicide inside the U.S. and how many were convicted elsewhere; how many are currently charged with homicide in the U.S. and how many are charged with it elsewhere. Some of those people entered the U.S. without a homicide conviction or pending homicide charge and then picked up a homicide charge or conviction while here. Others had a homicide conviction or pending homicide charge in another country when they entered the U.S. But what we do know is that 15,272 is the number of non-citizens ICE is aware of in the U.S. who are either charged with or have already been convicted of homicide — 62.59 out of every 100,000 non-citizens present in the U.S. It seems like a lot, doesn’t it?
Should we just dismiss any concerns about it on grounds that immigrants commit crimes at a lesser rate than the native-born?
Understand that the 13,376 non-citizens on the ICE docket who have been convicted of homicide and the 1,896 who are currently charged with homicide are just a snapshot. As people in these categories are removed from the U.S., they are also removed from the ICE docket and are no longer included in these numbers. But then again, non-citizens — both those legally and illegally present in the U.S., along with those who enter illegally before claiming asylum and hanging out here legally until their asylum claims are rejected (well more than half of all asylum seekers) – come and go. The flow of non-citizens is dynamic, unlike the situation with the native-born population who tend to stay in the U.S. Nevertheless, on July 21, 2024, the number of non-citizens on the ICE docket who either had a homicide conviction or a pending homicide charge represented 62.59 out of every 100,000 non-citizens in the U.S.
We don’t know how many of the people with homicide convictions or pending homicide charges on ICE’s docket entered the U.S. illegally and how many were vetted and allowed to enter legally. Some of them might have arrived legally and then committed a homicide while here. But it seems much less likely that those who entered the U.S. with a pending homicide charge or a homicide conviction elsewhere did so after being vetted than it does that they entered the U.S. illegally to begin with.
It also seems likely that those who were vetted and allowed to enter legally are less likely to commit homicide once inside the U.S. than un-vetted illegal enterers. So, it seems likely that most of the people on the ICE docket who have a homicide conviction or a pending homicide charge entered the U.S. illegally. And really, we should try to determine the rate of homicides committed by the people who entered the U.S. illegally if those are the people – and not the ones who entered legally – committing the homicides.
If all of the 15,272 people on ICE’s docket with a homicide conviction or pending homicide charge entered the U.S. illegally, they would be 138.83 out of every 100,000 of the 11 million non-citizens illegally present in the U.S. For an idea how astronomical it is to have 138.83 out of every 100,000 people in a given population, or even 62.59 out of every 100,000, charged with or convicted of homicide, let’s compare that to the overall U.S. homicide rate per 100,000.
The U.S. homicide rate has risen over the past several years. According to numbers reported by the CDC for 2022 (the most recent year reported) there were 24,849 homicides that year. In a U.S. population of 333.3 million, that amounts to a rate of 7.45 homicides for every 100,000 people. In other words, spread across the entire non-citizen U.S. population, our ICE snapshot of 15,272 non-citizens charged with or convicted of homicide results in a rate of 62.59 for every 100,000 non-citizens — a rate 8.4 times the overall 2022 U.S. homicide rate.
Assuming that every homicide committed in the U.S. results in a charge being lodged against someone, it would take 8.4 years to amass enough people to achieve that rate among the overall U.S. population. But Considering that the U.S. rate of clearance by arrest is only roughly 52% for homicides, it would actually take about 16 years to amass enough people in the overall U.S. population to equal the rate of 62.59 people charged with or convicted of homicide for every 100,000 people. So, 62.59 non-citizens charged with or convicted of homicide for every 100,000 non-citizens in the U.S. is a big deal.
But again, it’s highly likely that the population of non-citizens with homicide convictions or pending homicide charges skews heavily toward non-citizens who entered the U.S. illegally, and away from the non-citizen population who entered legally after they were vetted. The rate of 138.8 out of every 100,000 of the 11 million non-citizens illegally in the U.S. is 18.63 times the overall 2022 U.S. homicide rate. At the current U.S. homicide clearance rate, if U.S. homicides continued to occur at the 2022 rate, it would take about 36 years to achieve a rate of 138.8 out of every 100,000 people having been charged with or convicted of homicide in the overall U.S. population. That seems like a big deal.
Any way you slice it, 15,272 non-citizens convicted of or charged with homicide represents a lot of homicides for the size of the group. And it represents way too many dead people, and way too many people in the U.S. subjected to danger by way too many people who should not be here in the first place.
How many of those non-citizens on the ICE docket entered the U.S. illegally? It’s well past time to stop the madness.
Oh, but “Calm down, racist,” the pro-lax border enforcement crowd will continue to tell you. Immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the native born, so… This one goes to eleven… I was raised a middle-class kid.
