Republicans repeatedly misrepresented statistics about immigration and crime during the confirmation hearing for Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Homeland Security on Friday, giving a preview of the baseless fearmongering that is likely to be a hallmark of the incoming administration.
The lawmakers questioning South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to oversee the department that runs border and interior immigration enforcement, claimed the Biden administration has “let in” thousands ofmurderers and hundreds of suspected terroristsover the past four years — but that’s not true, according to data from the same department Noem is hoping to run.
After one senator asked Noem about homegrown terrorism — in light of two recentdeadly incidents carried out by American citizens — Noem changed topics, saying, “We all agree that the No. 1 threat to our homeland security is the southern border.”
It’s not true that “everyone agrees” with Noem. In the last 50 years, there hasn’t been a single American killed in a terrorist attack carried out by someone who entered the United States illegally, according to Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, who has spent years studying immigration and crime.
Separately in the hearing, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) claimed Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary under President Joe Biden, had “allowed” around 400 people on the terrorism watch list, formally known as the “terrorist screening data set,” to “come into this country illegally.” Noem cited similar figures.
This appears to be a misrepresentation of immigration data. U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics refer not to people “allowed” into the country, but rather to “encounters” between U.S. officials and people trying to cross the border at or between ports of entry. In other words, CBP counts the people who are stopped by border agents.
According to DHS, noncitizens on the watchlist who are encountered at a port of entry “are most commonly found inadmissible to our country and immediately repatriated or removed,” and those who enter the country without inspection “are most commonly detained and removed or turned over to another government agency for subsequent detention and law enforcement action, as appropriate.”
“It’s laughable that Democrats and their media mouthpieces like the Huffington Post are still pretending the border crisis is just ‘misinformation,’” Moreno’s spokesperson, Reagan McCarthy, said in a statement.
Notably, Noem changed her wording when referringto the DHS data, depending on the president: She said the Biden administration had “let in” people on the watch list, but that during the Trump administration, people on the list “were then removed from the country and faced consequences.”
Republicans’ focus on people on the watch list sneaking in over the southern border is also misleading. According to the same DHS data covering the last seven years, encounters with people on the watch list mostly occurred at ports of entry on the Canadian border, with the exception of fiscal years 2019 and 2021, when they mostly occurred at ports of entry on the southern border.
Not everyone on the terrorism watch list is a terrorist. The list includes “known or suspected terrorists,” or KSTs, as well as people simply “associated with” KSTs, including their family members. And while there are a handful of isolated examples of people on the list being able to get into the country after arriving at the border, they’re all subject to arrest and expulsion.
Finally, Noem and Moreno went back and forth over a number Trump repeatedly lied about on the campaign trail: that Mayorkas had “let in about 12,000 murderers.”
Moreno appeared to be referring to data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “non-detained docket.” Data released last year by ICE, which is housed within DHS, showed there were 13,099 people on ICE’s non-detained docket as of July. It may sound like that docket describes people walking free around the country, but that’s not the case — it only describes people who are not detained by ICE.
Many on the docket are currently serving prison time in federal and state institutions, and DHS notes that “most noncitizens who are convicted of homicide are typically not eligible for release from ICE custody.”
Moreno also claimed the DHS numbers described people who were “let in” to the country during the Biden administration — but in fact, that 13,099 tally covers decades. The number of people with criminal convictions on the non-detained docket did increase some during the Biden administration, but it also went up during the first Trump administration.
We Won’t Back Down
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
As NBC News reported, “A 2016 DHS Inspector General’s report found there were 368,000 criminal immigrants who were not detained by ICE. According to ICE’s fiscal year 2023 budget justification, there were 405,786 convicted criminal immigrants on the non-detained docket as of June 5, 2021, just under five months after Trump left office, indicating many crossed during the Trump administration. As of July of [2024], according to the data provided by ICE to Rep. [Tony] Gonzales, over 435,719 convicted criminal immigrants were on ICE’s non-detained docket.”
Translation? Republicans grossly misrepresented numbers, yet again, to fearmonger about immigrants.