Did Kamala Harris let 500,000 criminals, including 15,000 rapists and 13,000 murderers, into the United States and they are now "roaming the country"? No, that's not true: A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Lead Stories that the "data goes back decades" and is being "misinterpreted." Most of these individuals did not arrive during the Biden-Harris administration, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Instagram on September 28, 2024. The post's caption said:
When you import 500,000 criminals into a country - 15,000 of which are rapists and 13,000 of which are murderers - how are you not guilty of treason?
Looking at you, Kamala Harris!
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Sep 30 22:53:22 2024 UTC)
The post provided no additional evidence to support its assertion that the Biden-Harris administration "imported" half a million criminals into the United States.
The data in question began circulating in late September 2024, after acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director P.J. Lechleitner sent a letter (archived here) responding to a March 2024 request from Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican congressman from Texas. The letter included a chart with "Noncitizens by Criminality and Most Serious Charge Category." The chart can be seen here (archived here).
Department of Homeland Security
In a September 30, 2024, email, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Lead Stories, "The data in this letter is being misinterpreted." The spokesperson continued:
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.
DHS is saying that just because the immigrants aren't in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of DHS, doesn't necessarily mean they're out "roaming the country," as Fox News' Bill Melugin reported (archived here) on September 27, 2024. These immigrants could, instead, be held by authorities somewhere else.
Despite what the social media post suggests, most of the individuals in the data didn't arrive during the Biden-Harris administration. For example, a 2017 report (archived here) from the DHS Office of Inspector General (page 7) noted that as of August 2016, five months before the Trump administration began, ICE was overseeing around 368,574 convicted criminals out of a total of 2.2 million noncitizens on its non-detained docket. By June 2021, less than five months into the Biden-Harris administration, this number had risen to 405,786 convicted criminals, according to page 64 of the FY 2023 ICE Congressional Budget Justification (archived here). As of July 2024, the figure stands at approximately 425,000.
The DHS added in its remarks to Lead Stories:
As of August 2024, DHS had removed or returned more than 700,000 individuals during the preceding 12 months - more than any year since 2010. Since the June 3 [2024] Presidential Proclamation and interim final rule, DHS has removed or returned more than 140,000 individuals to more than 144 countries, including by operating more than 430 international repatriation flights. This Administration has achieved unprecedented results in its enforcement of immigration law, including against individuals who pose a potential threat to public safety or national security. The Department has removed over 180,000 noncitizens with criminal convictions since January 2021.
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At the time this was written, FactCheck.org (here and here) had reviewed similar claims.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about immigrants to the U.S. can be found here.
