Former President Donald Trump has recently claimed that President Joe Biden allowed 13,000 immigrant murderers into the United States and then allowed them to freely roam the streets of American cities.
However, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler looked at the origins of this claim and deemed it "outrageously false" and even a "figment of his imagination."
The reality, writes Kessler, is that the vast majority of the murderers in question have been incarcerated for years, with many having been in prison since before Trump's first term.
The false claim about 13,000 murderers being let free began when Immigration and Customs Enforcement director P.J. Lechleitner responded to a request for information from Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) in which he said that there were roughly 13,000 immigrants who had been convicted of homicide who were not currently being detained by ICE.
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However, writes Kessler, it turns out that these convicted killers are being detained by agencies other than ICE and aren't simply free to roam the streets.
"With so little space available in ICE detention centers, many criminals convicted of serious crimes are shipped to another facility to serve out their terms," writes Kessler. "Some noncitizens on the non-detained docket may participate in the agency’s Alternatives to Detention programs, which generally track people with GPS monitoring devices or the SmartLINK phone app, but murderers would not qualify. A 2021 Biden administration memo made detention a priority for noncitizens who pose 'a current threat to public safety.'"
Furthermore, as the Department of Homeland Security said last month, the list of 13,000 convicted killers "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.”