False claim that 425,000 convicts entered US under Biden | Fact check

An Oct. 2 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) from the conservative group Turning Point Action claims to share Immigration and Customs Enforcement data about the number of criminals who entered the U.S. under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“BREAKING: According to a new report from the Deputy Director of ICE, Joe Biden and Border Czar Kamala Harris allowed a SHOCKING number of criminals into America, including: 13,099 Murderers, 15,811 Rapists, 425,431 Convicted Criminals,” reads the post, which is a screenshot of a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Treason. Disqualifying. Evil.”A Nov. 2 Facebook post echoed the claim, saying the Biden-Harris administration also “welcomed in” an additional 222,141 people facing criminal charges.
The Instagram post was liked more than 9,000 times in seven weeks.
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This claim misinterprets what the report says, according to immigration experts and the Department of Homeland Security. The ICE data referenced in the posts represents people who entered the U.S. over the last 40 years or longer, not just during the Biden-Harris administration. Most of them were convicted before Biden’s presidency, an expert said.
The statistics referenced in the posts come from a Sept. 25 letter that ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner sent to Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, in response to a request for the number of noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s docket.
Lechleitner’s letter noted that 425,431 convicted criminals, including 13,099 with homicide convictions, were on ICE’s “non-detained” docket as of July 21. Another 222,141 individuals on the non-detained docket had pending criminal charges.
However, Luis Miranda, a Homeland Security spokesperson, said social media users have “misinterpreted” the data in the letter, as the numbers do not solely represent people who entered the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration.
“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,” Miranda said in an email. “It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, similarly said the claim in the posts is “flatly wrong” because ICE’s non-detained docket does not only include people who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration. People with green cards and others who entered the country legally can also end up on the docket if they’ve “committed an offense which renders them removable,” like overstaying a visa, he said.
“The docket includes people who entered the country at various points over multiple decades and with a wide variety of immigration statuses, and includes people who are currently in prison serving time but are nonetheless counted on the ‘non-detained’ docket because they are not detained by ICE,” Reichlin-Melnick said in an email.
Victor Romero, the interim dean at Penn State Law whose research includes immigration policy, agreed. In an email, he explained that the U.S. immigration system is “separate” from the “federal, state and local criminal justice systems.” A noncitizen convicted of homicide under state law could be serving a state prison sentence and not show up as “detained” in the data because the person is not in ICE custody, he said.
“So, the social media post that claims that the current administration has ‘allowed’ these ‘criminals into America’ is misleading because, as the DHS claims, many are likely incarcerated by other criminal law enforcement agencies, and are not roaming freely in the U.S.,” Romero said in an email.
Emily Brown, director of the immigration clinic at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, agreed, noting people on the non-detained list “could be in federal or state prison, or living in the community, or could even have left the United States without ICE’s knowledge.”
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ICE maintains “detained” and “non-detained” dockets. The “non-detained” docket includes most noncitizens in removal proceedings or subject to final removal orders, according to ICE’s annual report for fiscal year 2023. The agency logged about 6.2 million cases on its “non-detained” docket that year, up from about 4.7 million in fiscal year 2022. Comparatively, ICE had about 37,000 cases on its detained docket in fiscal year 2023, up from about 26,000 in fiscal year 2022, according to the report.
Though it is not an apples-to-apples comparison, the number of “criminal noncitizens” arrested by Border Patrol during the Biden administration also falls far short of 425,000, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics. The data shows 55,106 such arrests occurred from fiscal year 2021 through fiscal year 2024, a period that runs from Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2024. That group included 180 convictions of manslaughter or homicide and 1,358 convictions of sexual offenses.
These arrests involve individuals with prior convictions in the U.S. or abroad and are only a portion of total Border Patrol apprehensions, according to the Customs and Border Protection website.
USA TODAY reached out to the Instagram and Facebook users who shared the posts for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
FactCheck.org and AFP also debunked similar claims.
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This story was updated to correct a typo.