ICE, Interpreting Migrant Convictions

[Leifer]

In a letter from ICE, Patrick Lechleitner (Deputy Director) responds to a request by House RepresentitiveTony Gonzales (R), requesting...

"the number of nonctizens on ICE's docket convicted or charged with a crime."

Here is the requested info...
LINK .pdf

This letter and it's data (numbers) is being used by GOP advocates and media, to bolster or prove Trump's claims that immigrant criminals are flooding the country and increasing the crime rates, or that they are a significant crime-wave unto themselves.
Briefly, I have compared these ICE migrant crime numbers, statistically, to American citizen crime rates. The migrant crime rates are extremely close to citizen crime rates.
Though, exact known statistics are problematic.
* Time period of data (span).
* Lag-time of data reporting.
* Sources with different definitions of a crime.
* Sources that include non-desirable data, or that exclude the desired data (or both).
* Search engine rankings (top hits)
* Reporting bias.
* ??? more.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports includes 8 basic types of major crimes, but not minor crimes such as misdemeanors or ?
Whereas the National Incident-Base Reporting System does not include murder/homicide because it uses "victims" for reporting. Dead people are difficult to interview.
There are also regional law enforcement stats/reporting, and the CDC.
Here are the crimes and numbers recently reported by ICE...



Help me on my math.
Example...
If the ICE docket these numbers are polled from is 7,400,000 migrants*, and those allowed through who have a convicted homicide is 13,000...that is 0.17% homicide conviction rate (for non-legal entering migrants with pending status ).

Then if the U.S. citizen population has 7.5 homicides per 100,000, per year (2022).... and only half of those are caught and charged (3.75), and then half of those charged receive convictions, the per-100k is 1.875
U.S. population is 345,000,000.
345M ÷ 100K = 3,450.
3,450 multiplied by 1.875 = about 6500 convictions.
....then the overall US citizen homicide conviction rate is about 0.0018%.
Does that seem correct ?

[* 7.4M is from a news site, but ICE ANNUAL Report says 6.2M at end of 2023]

An article by Alex Nowrasteh from the CATO Institute, cites data on how illegal immigrants in Texas have a low homicide conviction rate.

The homicide conviction rate for illegal immigrants was 2.4 per 100,000 illegal immigrants in 2015, which is lower than the homicide conviction rate of 2.8 per 100,000 for native-born Americans. Legal immigrants still have the lowest homicide conviction rate at 1.1 per 100,000 legal immigrants. Those rates are similar across the years for which data are available.

It's entirely probable that because the numbers are so difficult to compare and easily convoluted, that pundits and politicians are able to quote exagerated numbers because any strong argument against them could take hours of conversation and a bucketload of "what if's".

Blatant misrepresentations of the data are easier to notice by aware viewers who favor fact-checking. Today, Jessie Waters from FOX seemed shocked by ICE's data, claiming that a 5% rate of immigrant criminal history is outrageous !! An easy fact-check reveals that the US citizen criminal history rate is.... about 5- 8% of Americans had a felony, and up to14% had misdemeanors, depending on the source and date of the data.
(Near the end @12.00)

Source: https://youtu.be/_J-MhwlvOyQ?si=466K4caLiDOWes8k&t=12m01s


Nothing can stop Trump from using this data and embellish, at a speech... 'illegal immigrants slice-up their daughter while her parents watched'

 

[Mendel]

Help me on my math.
Example...
If the ICE docket these numbers are polled from is 7,400,000 migrants*, and those allowed through who have a convicted homicide is 13,000...that is 0.17% homicide conviction rate (for non-legal entering migrants with pending status ).

That's for their whole life so far.

Then if the U.S. citizen population has 7.5 homicides per 100,000, per year (2022).... and only half of those are caught and charged (3.75), and then half of those charged receive convictions, the per-100k is 1.875
U.S. population is 345,000,000.

1.875/100,000=0.00001875=0.001875
You can skip the rest of the maths.
But note that this is a "per year" statistic. And you're assuming 1 perpetrator per homicide.

And a big factor throwing things off is demographics: toddlers and grannies rarely kill people, but old people are overrepresented in the US population, while illegal immigrants are largely working-age.

You also need to consider whether the data is for homicide alone, or whether it includes manslaughter.

 

[Mendel]

Article:

Arrest Type​	FY17​	FY18​	FY19​	FY20​	FY21​	FY22​	FY23​	FY24YTD​
U.S. Border Patrol Criminal Noncitizen Arrests​	8,531​	6,698​	4,269​	2,438​	10,763​	12,028​	15,267​	15,608​

Total Criminal Convictions by Type

This table organizes nationwide convictions of criminal noncitizens by type of criminal conduct. Because some criminal noncitizens may be convicted of multiple criminal offenses, total convictions listed below exceed the total arrests noted in the table above.

Conviction Type​	FY17​	FY18​	FY19​	FY20​	FY21​	FY22​	FY23​	FY24YTD​
Homicide, Manslaughter​	3​	3​	2​	3​	60​	62​	29​	27​

Source: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/criminal-noncitizen-statistics

These are small numbers.

 

[Mendel]

Article:

Two studies found that undocumented immigrants in Texas commit homicide at significantly lower rates than their U.S.-born counterparts.

A June 2024 analysis by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh found that, for the years 2013-2022, the homicide conviction rate in Texas for "illegal immigrants" was 2.2 per 100,000, while that of native-born Americans was 3.0 per 100,000.

For example, in 2022, undocumented immigrants made up about 7.1% of the Texas population and accounted for 67, or 5%, of the 1,336 people convicted of homicide.

That same year, 1,209, or 90.5%, of people convicted of homicide were native-born Americans, who made up 82.5% of the population, the analysis said.

"I've seen zero evidence for illegal immigrants killing 4,000 people a year," Nowrasteh said in an email. "I've never seen that number defended by anybody spreading it."

Similarly, a 2020 study, opens new tab published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal found that undocumented immigrants were less than half as likely to be arrested for homicide than U.S.-born citizens, based on Texas data.

The study, by Michael Light, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and two other researchers, found the arrest rate for homicide was 1.9 per 100,000 people among undocumented immigrants and 4.8 per 100,000 among U.S.-born citizens from 2012 to 2018.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/no-evidence-4000-people-are-killed-yearly-by-undocumented-immigrants-2024-09-27/

You are 16 times more likely to be killed by a US-born citizen than by an illegal immigrant. If you compare them one vs. one, the US-born citizen is twice as likely to kill you as the illegal immigrant. (That's assuming comparable victim numbers for each).

 

[Ann K]

@Leifer
Right from the start, there's a problem that I see. You asked for stats on non-citizens, then compared them with data from Texas on illegal immigrants, and of course those are not the same thing. No matter how well-behaved a perfectly legal immigrant is, it still takes a number of years to gain citizenship.

 

[Mendel]

I really don't understand how ICE can have over 13,000 homicides on the books (presumably including manslaughter) when the border patrol numbers are so low.

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

That's for their whole life so far.

1.875/100,000=0.00001875=0.001875
You can skip the rest of the maths.
But note that this is a "per year" statistic. And you're assuming 1 perpetrator per homicide.

And a big factor throwing things off is demographics: toddlers and grannies rarely kill people, but old people are overrepresented in the US population, while illegal immigrants are largely working-age.

You also need to consider whether the data is for homicide alone, or whether it includes manslaughter.

Also the type of homicide, not just manslaughter. Some states get really tricky there in defining between the two and sometimes things we'd generally consider manslaughter, in some states, may be a form of homicide.

I forget the term for it but there's also some states that have laws where you can be charged if you're present at a crime but not responsible. Lot of people get jammed up for it when cops can't really find the actual suspect to charge, or someone on that end is acting emotionally. There's cases out there of cops killing someone, in legitimate self defense, but their friends being charged for homicide for being present (not claiming that they influenced him into the act) and not actually doing anything to harm the person.
https://apnews.com/article/felony-murder-officer-shooting-alabama-b61f62d011584039e08b5bc02524e3fe

Article:

Maxwell said the case, which has garnered national attention because of Smith's age and the sentence he received, is the "poster child" for the misuse of felony murder laws that allow someone to be charged for a killing during commission of a felony even if the death was unintentional.


The fatal shooting happened on Feb. 23, 2015, when Millbrook police officers responded to a call of a burglary in progress. A Millbrook police officer shot and killed 16-year-old A'Donte Washington when officers surprised the teens, local news outlets reported. A grand jury cleared the officer in the shooting. The surviving four teens were charged with felony murder. Three took a plea deal, and Smith went to trial.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/felony-murder-officer-shooting-alabama-b61f62d011584039e08b5bc02524e3fe

 

[Ann K]

I forget the term for it but there's also some states that have laws where you can be charged if you're present at a crime but not responsible.

If you're present at a killing but failed to stop it, you bear some of the responsibility. Granted, there are some events at which you may have had no way of knowing what another person would do, but that's why you should have listened to your mother when she told you not to hang out with those guys.

 

[deirdre]

Nothing can stop Trump from using this data and embellish, at a speech... 'illegal immigrants slice-up their daughter while her parents watched'

where did you get that quote?


15,000 rapists too!? shit. debunk numbers all you want, but the government let in 28,000 violent offenders (that we know of). I'm not sure an argument of "americans are worse" helps the cause at all. we certainly dont need 28k MORE!

 

[deirdre]

I forget the term for it

its right in the title of your article : felony murder.

Article:

The felony murder rule is a rule that allows a defendant to be charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurs during a dangerous felony, even if the defendant is not the killer. The felony murder rule applies only to those crimes that are considered "inherently dangerous," as the rationale underlying the felony murder rule is that certain crimes are so dangerous that society wants to deter individuals from engaging in them altogether. Thus, when a person participates in an inherently dangerous crime, he or she may be held responsible for the fatal consequences of that crime, even if someone else caused the actual death.

The felony murder rule is an exception to the normal rules of homicide. Normally, a defendant can be convicted of murder only if a prosecutor shows that the defendant acted with the intent to kill or with a reckless indifference to human life. Under the felony murder rule, however, a defendant can be convicted of murder even if the defendant did not act with intent or a reckless indifference; the prosecution must show only that the defendant participated in a felony where fatalities occurred.

Source: https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/homicide/felony-murder/

 

[Leifer]

where did you get that quote?

Nothing can stop Trump from using this data and embellish, at a speech... 'illegal immigrants slice-up their daughter while her parents watched'

Why ? Does it sound unbelievable ?
Does it sound shocking ?
Who would say such a thing?

Source: https://youtu.be/AuVysC1nnJ0?si=-CD3OUy3Q2iQS38p&t=4m30s

 

[deirdre]

Why ? Does it sound unbelievable ?

no. i just never heard of a child being sliced in front of parents..except israel of course.

Article:

​

September 23, 2024 A member of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang was arrested in a tiny Wisconsin community for allegedly sexually assaulting a mother and abusing her daughter after he had been arrested and released earlier this year in Minneapolis.

...

Alejandro Jose Coronel Zarate, 26, assaulted the woman and child "under particularly brutal circumstances," and attacked his victims "over the course of a period of time," Prairie du Chien Police Chief Kyle Teynor said at a September 9 press conference following Coronel Zarate's arrest.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/families-swing-state-afraid-let-kids-play-outside-after-venezuelan-migrant-attacks-mom-child-lawmaker

 

[Ann K]

where did you get that quote?

Much of the rhetoric about a purported immigrant crime wave has stemmed from or was amplified by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, his supporters and other high-profile conservatives on social media, such as X owner Elon Musk.

Trump has said immigrants "are poisoning the blood" of our country. Trump recently said in a Sept. 25 campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina, if Vice President Kamala Harris had closed the border years ago, "we wouldn't have hostile takeovers of Springfield, Ohio, Aurora, Colorado, where they're actually going in with massive machine-gun type equipment. They're going in with guns that are beyond even military scope."
[...]
But experts told PolitiFact — and crime statistics and studies show — that the rhetoric about immigrants and crime is often exaggerated or false. Such rhetoric is nothing new, especially during a political campaign, experts said.

"Ever since the U.S. has had migrants, a subset of them have been vilified," Alex Piquero, a University of Miami criminology professor and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said. The same thing is happening elsewhere, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, he added.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/27/whats-behind-recent-false-claims-about-immigrants/

 

[deirdre]

Much of the rhetoric about a purported immigrant crime wave has stemmed from or was amplified by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, his supporters and other high-profile conservatives on social media, such as X owner Elon Musk.

Trump has said immigrants "are poisoning the blood" of our country. Trump recently said in a Sept. 25 campaign rally in Mint Hill, North Carolina, if Vice President Kamala Harris had closed the border years ago, "we wouldn't have hostile takeovers of Springfield, Ohio, Aurora, Colorado, where they're actually going in with massive machine-gun type equipment. They're going in with guns that are beyond even military scope."
[...]
But experts told PolitiFact — and crime statistics and studies show — that the rhetoric about immigrants and crime is often exaggerated or false. Such rhetoric is nothing new, especially during a political campaign, experts said.

"Ever since the U.S. has had migrants, a subset of them have been vilified," Alex Piquero, a University of Miami criminology professor and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said. The same thing is happening elsewhere, including the United Kingdom and Sweden, he added.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/27/whats-behind-recent-false-claims-about-immigrants/

that's not the quote. or are you just trying to defend to me that 28,000 (that we know of) violent convicts being let in to the country is Aok?

 

[Mendel]

that's not the quote. or are you just trying to defend to me that 28,000 (that we know of) violent convicts being let in to the country is Aok?

The idea that convicted criminals are let out of prison after a while does not sit well with you, deirdre, does it?

The ICE have 90,000 non-citizen criminals down for "immigration", and 125,000 for "traffic offenses".

I'm not sure an argument of "americans are worse" helps the cause at all.

Yeah, I don't either. It's clearly not about the numbers, it's about the fear and outrage, and reasoned arguments have no place there.

OF COURSE the argument has a place where populist politicians attempt to vilify a scapegoat groups of fellow humans. The fact that these people are the same as us if not better should be on the mind of anyone who has a shred of empathy.

(The person who was charged with eating her pet in Springfield was not an immigrant.)

 

[Ann K]

(The person who was charged with eating her pet in Springfield was not an immigrant.)

As I recall the one who ate a cat was in Canton, 150 miles away. The woman who claimed Haitians ate her cat was in Springfield. (Neither woman was an immigrant.) The cat was found alive and well in her basement.

 

[Leifer]

The gist of the post is to help ascertain if the reported numbers of migrant convicted criminals allowed in (w/pending status) were 'about the same' as US citizens, statistically. And if 'yes', are these numbers being manipulated or misrepresented during this election.

One response to incoming potential citizens (and their criminal history as a group) goes something like this.... "Well, if they are allowing 1000 (for example) criminals into the US, then that's 1000 that wouldn't be here, if they were denied entry in the first place."
But if the rest of the people (group) who are allowed to pass and are NOT criminals, and the criminal histories as a group are statistically the same as legal citizens, then it becomes a discussion on 'regulating population growth'.
Though I do see some logic where, if a nation is attempting to reduce crime, they might try to filter incoming populations based on the possibility of future crime in relation to past criminality.

 

[deirdre]

The idea that convicted criminals are let out of prison after a while does not sit well with you, deirdre, does it?

talk about moving the goalposts! oy.

 

[deirdre]

OF COURSE the argument has a place where populist politicians attempt to vilify a scapegoat groups of fellow humans.

the Biden administration is being vilified for not securing the border and not properly vetting those let in and having no plans for the huge numbers let in. It's an election year. If you think the Republican Party isnt thrilled NY and Chicago etc are being crushed under the weight of illegal immigration and their citizens are outraged, you'd be wrong.


(ps lying on your asylum application is illegal. The only reason so many are 'pending' is because the court system is years and years behind schedule due to the vast numbers)

 

[Mendel]

Though I do see some logic where, if a nation is attempting to reduce crime, they might try to filter incoming populations based on the possibility of future crime in relation to past criminality.

Or they could deport criminals to Australia.

A criminal is not what a person is, it's what a person does. When convicted, they serve their sentence, and go back to being members of society.
Democracies do not punish people based on "the possibility of future crime", that'd be a human rights violation.

 

[Ann K]

The gist of the post is to help ascertain if the reported numbers of migrant convicted criminals allowed in (w/pending status) were 'about the same' as US citizens, statistically. And if 'yes', are these numbers being manipulated or misrepresented during this election.

This doesn't mention a comparison with US citizens, but concerns the misrepresentation of immigrant statistics:

From several of Trump's posts on Truth Social:

Kamala should immediately cancel her News Conference because it was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her three and a half year period as Border Czar – Also currently in our Country because of her are 15,811 migrants convicted of rape and sexual assault.

"We handed this Administration the Most Secure Border of our Lifetime!" Tom Homan, Former Ice Director.

Comrade Kamala Harris, who allowed almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country, is now making a Speech in Douglas, Arizona, trying to say she did an OK job with the Border. She didn't!
......
CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale reports:

Trump's claims are false in two big ways. First, the statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration. Second, that ICE "non-detained" list includes people who are still serving jail and prison sentences for their crimes; they are on the list because they are not being held in immigration detention in particular.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a Saturday email: "The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners."

https://www.joemygod.com/2024/09/trump-busted-in-insane-lies-about-criminal-migrants/

@deirdre, please note that the DHS is explicitly not blaming "the Biden administration".

 

[deirdre]

@deirdre, please note that the DHS is explicitly not blaming "the Biden administration".

the DHS are populist politicians?

democracies do not punish people based on "the possibility of future crime",

America does. Our immigration laws cover who is allowed to get asylum, visas etc. I'm surprised Germany let's in murderers and rapists, can we send ours to you?

 

[Ann K]

the DHS are populist politicians?

The DHS, who are the people whose business it is to know, have explicitly given the statistics that show that your "populist politicians" are telling tall tales that have no basis in reality.

democracies do not punish people based on "the possibility of future crime",

(Deirdre:) America does. Our immigration laws cover who is allowed to get asylum, visas etc. I'm surprised Germany lets in murderers and rapists, can we send ours to you?

Our American immigration laws make judgements based on PAST behavior, not on "crimes they may commit in the future."

 

[Leifer]

Ann K said....CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale reports

CNN Fact Check....
https://t.co/vIkg6FkrcF

Explains it pretty well, including a quote from past ICE interim Director....

Regardless, John Sandweg, an attorney who served as acting director of ICE during the Obama administration, said in a Saturday interview that it is "100% false" to say all the homicide offenders on the non-detained docket entered the US during Harris' vice presidency. Sandweg added: "These are individuals who undoubtedly entered the United States over a long period of time. … A lot of them have probably been on the list for 20 years, where the US has just been unable to deport."