A GOP rep asked ICE for an update. Then Trump ran with the number

A previously obscure immigration dataset entered the public lexicon over the past week, sparking a new attack line for Republicans and a deluge of fact-checking over an accurate, yet decontextualized, number.

Last week, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) drew attention to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “non-detained docket,” one of the datasets that, for most people, is not just a few clicks away.

“I asked [acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner], one, how many criminal aliens are in this country? What I mean by that, I’m not talking about your abuelita that came over years ago and may or may not be documented. I’m not talking about the guy that’s maybe building a house, or none of that, or 8-year-old — I’m talking about convicted criminal aliens. That’s what I’m talking about. That was the number I asked him. At the time he goes, ‘Tony it’s a lot,’” Gonzales told The Hill.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) publishes massive amounts of data, both on immigration and on border enforcement, though some databases are kept under wraps.

“There has been extensive effort in the transparency community to get the U.S. government to produce more data about its operations, and the amount of information available about the immigration enforcement system today is unprecedented. Much of this is data that the U.S. government has had for generations but has not shared with the general public,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

Lechleitner opened up the books and sent Gonzales a letter with ICE criminal detainee numbers and the non-detained docket, an accounting of foreign nationals convicted of criminal charges or pending criminal charges who are known to be or have been in the United States and who are not in ICE detention.

The raw numbers shocked Gonzales, who made the letter public.

ICE’s non-detained docket reports more than 600,000 alleged or convicted foreign-national criminals likely in the United States and not in ICE detention, including about 13,000 convicted murderers.

Former President Trump quickly grasped on that figure, claiming his election rival Vice President Harris was responsible for releasing 13,000 murderers onto the streets.

“In total during her term, it’s not even believable, she let in 13,099 convicted murderers. Some of them had murdered 10 people, some murdered seven, one murdered six. I’m looking at these. These are stone-cold killers, and they let in people that are worse than any criminal we have,” Trump said at a rally in Erie, Pa., last weekend.

Trump’s representation of the numbers was wrong: The vast majority of the non-detained docket has built up over decades, and it includes any deportable foreign national in the criminal justice system not in ICE custody, including criminals in jails and prisons.

“It’s not just disingenuous. It’s an intentional misuse of information in order to further the dehumanization that we’ve seen cause so much harm and violence over the past few weeks. So it’s not accidental,” said Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center.

So who is on the docket? It’s complicated, say experts.

“We can’t know for certain, because they haven’t given out that information, but someone like [Joaquín] Chapo Guzman, so long as he had had an interaction with ICE while in the United States, which seems likely, he will probably be on ICE’s non-detained docket, because he is a non-citizen who is removable, who is not detained by ICE,” said Reichlin-Melnick.

“Zacarias Moussaoui, sometimes called the 20th [9/11] hijacker, who’s been in federal detention since 2001 and is currently serving a life sentence at ADX Florence, the supermax prison in Colorado. He’s probably on ICE’s non-detained docket. Richard Reed, the British shoe bomber, the guy responsible for us having to take our shoes off at TSA. He is a removable non-citizen who is also serving a life sentence in Colorado. He also is probably on ICE’s non detained docket as a British citizen.”

The docket is also likely to include people who have left the United States, and it includes any foreign nationals with a record, including those released after serving criminal sentences, who either interacted with ICE or left the country and returned.

Not all crimes render all foreign nationals deportable, but in some cases decades-old citations or minor convictions have landed unsuspecting permanent residents in hot water with ICE — those permanent residents would count toward the docket shared in Lechleitner’s letter.

“They just didn’t give any sense of time frame here. And I think that is a little bit suspect, knowing full well how this would play in our polarized media climate, that they would just put that out without any context. It’s just troubling,” said Adam Isaacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America.

In the aftermath of Gonzales’s publication of the letter, DHS issued a statement delineating some of that context.

“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,” said Luis Miranda, a DHS spokesperson.

Gonzales expressed frustration at the statistical debate, saying instead his intent was to shine a light on a public safety issue.

“The reality is that number is somewhere in between zero and 13,199, right? I don’t know what that number is, but I guarantee you, the administration does know. Instead of saying the number is zero, once again, why can’t we just talk — or don’t even talk about the number, why don’t you just talk about what you’re doing in order to keep Americans safe?” he said.

That approach has in the past infuriated border experts and immigration advocates, since it sets an unreachable goal for law enforcement.

“What they’re gonna say is, you’re gonna start hearing this rhetoric: ‘If there’s one, it’s too many.’ It’s absurd from the policy perspective. There is no other public safety issue where the expectation is zero,” said Mike Madrid, a GOP consultant and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.

And, unlike Gonzales, who says he’s “been singed” at times for bucking the party line, many Republicans are running with the 13,000 number.

“They’re not trying to have an honest debate. They just want the debate about the issue, because they’re so far ahead in confidence and trust with the public. It’s why JD Vance said it doesn’t matter whether [they are] telling the truth or not about eating pets. ‘As long as we’re talking about the issue, we’re winning.’ They’re right,” said Madrid.

—Updated Oct. 7 at 9:55 a.m.