FBI Director Kash Patel likes to point to his record of capturing fugitives from the bureau's Ten Most Wanted list, but current and former FBI officials say the numbers don't hold up.
The FBI celebrated the arrest of alleged Tren de Aragua leader Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre last week as the 10th Top Ten fugitive caught since President Donald Trump returned to office – "more than 2.5 times" the number captured under President Joe Biden – a new analysis by the Daily Beast's PunchUp found the comparison is flawed.
The analysis found a big difference in how long those fugitives stayed on the list before they were caught. The eight fugitives captured since Patel took over in February 2025 spent a median of 37.5 days on the list. The four caught under Biden spent a median of 482 days, and the fastest of those captures took 105 days.
Under Patel, three fugitives were arrested within about a day of being added. Samuel Ramirez Jr. was arrested in Mexico 73 minutes after he went on the list in March – the fastest capture in the program's history.
"The compressed time between placement on the list and capture smells like a strategy to game the system in favor of quick stats," said Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.
Retired supervisory special agent Daniel Brunner called Patel's numbers "hogwash." "They just put them up right when they are about to capture them, when they are closing in or doing surveillance," he said.
A current FBI official, speaking anonymously, unloaded on the director's methodology: "This kind of Soviet 'operations as propaganda' bulls--- started like day one and has been a constant."
Robert D'Amico, a 26-year FBI veteran, said the Ramirez arrest, in particular, didn't add up. "I have never seen a sequence of events like that happen in 73 minutes," D'Amico said. "That arrest was almost certainly already in motion. The listing didn't produce it, and counting it as a Top Ten success inflates the numbers."
D'Amico said not every quick arrest is suspect, noting that KaShawn Nicola Roper was caught the morning after she was added in April, and the FBI said tips generated by the announcement led to her capture.
The FBI claimed that career professionals choose additions to the list through a months-long process that hasn't changed in 76 years, and insisted Patel doesn't pick the fugitives. The bureau credited Patel's increase of the standard reward from $250,000 to $1 million, as well as closer work with foreign law enforcement.
The FBI also said fugitives caught since 2025 had been on the run for more than three and a half years on average. That number measures their total time as fugitives, though, not their time on the Top Ten list.
The FBI declined to say whether it already knew where Ramirez was when he was added, and bureau officials also wouldn't say when the selection process started for the three fugitives caught within about a day.
The analysis doesn't prove the list was manipulated, but former FBI executive Lauren Anderson said that if investigators already knew a fugitive's location, using the arrest as proof of the program's success would be "misleading."