ICE Arrested Noncitizens Charged or Convicted of 12,394 Homicides from 2017 to 2023
ICE has arrested noncitizen immigrants charged with 12,394 homicides in the seven-year period from 2017 to 2023, not including 2024, according to ICE’s annual reports of arrests and removals.
After Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas released a FOIA request showing ICE reported 13,000 non-detained immigrants convicted of homicide in the U.S., DHS maintained these figures reflect the situation over the past 40 years.
So I checked ICE's annual reports on arrest and removals. They show that from 2017 to 2023, ICE arrested noncitizen immigrants charged or convicted of:
1) 12,394 homicides
2) 11,414 kidnappings
3) 27,719 sexual assaults
4) 256,547 assaults
5) 27,891 robberies
Some offenders were charged or convicted of more than one crime. In 2023, for example, 73,882 noncitizens with criminal histories faced 290,708 charges or convictions, an average of four per person, according to ICE.
The annual reports also show that from 2016 to 2023 ICE has arrested:
1) 31,889 noncitizens who were known or suspected gang members.
2) 432 noncitizens who were known or suspected terrorists with 2023 being a record year with 139 alone (more than double 2022).
A GAO report shows that removals of criminal noncitizens from the U.S. has dropped under Biden because of “changing priorities” from Trump.
"While increasing slightly in 2022, since 2019 removals have dropped from 276,122 for 2019 to 81,547 for 2022.”
The ICE figures shows removals from the U.S. of known or suspected gang members dropped from an average of 4,619 a year under Trump to an average of 2,930 a year under Biden, apparently reflecting changed priorities.
ICE arrests for all crimes dropped from 2019 to 2021 but increased in 2022, according to the GAO report.
The GAO notes that from 2019 to January 2021, ICE’s priority was deporting all removable noncitizens. In September 2021, DHS updated priorities to only remove those noncitizens seen as a threat to national security, public safety, or border security.
The GAO report also says the ICE figures undercount the number of ICE detainees, since ICE, for an unknown reason, does not count those “who were first booked into temporary facilities but were subsequently detained in an ICE immigration detention facility.”
GAO said its analysis showed the undercounting amounted to tens of thousands of individuals but ICE does not “fully explain the rationale and basis for its methodology.”