DOJ, DHS release 'Alien Incarceration' report, say 94% of illegal aliens in custody were 'unlawfully present'

close

Video

Fox News Flash top headlines for October 16

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

EXCLUSIVE: The Justice Department on Friday said that 94% of confirmed illegal immigrants incarcerated in Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service facilities were nabbed while unlawfully present in the United States, Fox News has learned.

The data comes as part of the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security’s Alien Incarceration Report for Fiscal Year 2019, which was exclusively obtained by Fox News on Friday. According to the report, at the end of FY2019, a total of 51,074 known or suspected aliens were in DOJ custody, with 27,494 in BOP facilities, and 23,580 in USMS facilities.

Some 70% of those known illegal immigrants in BOP custody had been convicted of a non-immigration-related offense, while 39% of illegal immigrants in USMS facilities had been convicted of a non-immigration-related offense.

NINTH CIRCUIT RULES TRUMP CAN'T DIVERT MILITARY FUNDS FOR BORDER WALL

The report also notes that 969 individuals, or 3.6%, had committed offenses including kidnapping, murder, larceny, terrorism, escape, bribery and extortion, and rape.

More than half of the known or suspected illegal immigrants had U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) orders of removal or who had agreed to depart voluntarily, while 35.8% were still under investigation by ICE, and 7.2% were illegal aliens under adjudication. The report noted that 1.8% were legal aliens who were under adjudication, and 1.7% were aliens who had been granted relief or protection from removal.

According to the report, by the end of the fiscal year, USMS had “directly expended $162 million to house the 23,580 known or suspected aliens remanded to their custody in state, local,  and private facilities.” The average cost to house noncitizen in the facilities, according to the Justice Department, is $88.19 per prisoner, per day.

“The Departments continues to progress towards establishing data collection of the immigration status of convicted aliens incarcerated in state prisons and local detention centers through the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration statistics,” the report said.

The report detailed a number of cases the Justice Department had been reviewing.

For example, during the first quarter of 2019, in the Southern District of Florida, a Colombian national was sentenced to 180 months in prison for his role in a scheme to smuggle illegal aliens from Colombia into the United States, which resulted in the rape of one and the death of two Cuban nationals.

Another case in the District of South Carolina was about a Mexican citizen sentenced to 262 months in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine.

During the second quarter of 2019, the Justice Department said, in the Northern District of Iowa, a citizen of Guatemala illegally present in the U.S., was sentenced to six months in custody after a bench trial found him guilty of three counts of unlawful use of an identification document and four counts of misuse of a Social Security Number.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

And in the Western District of Louisiana, a citizen of Mexico was sentenced to 21 years in prison for distributing LSD in St. Mary Parish and possessing firearms.

The report came out after President Trump, in 2017, issued an executive order on “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” directing “the Secretary [of Homeland Security] and the Attorney General…to collect relevant data and provide quarterly reports” on the immigration status of all aliens incarcerated under the supervision of BOP and USMS, and the immigration status of all convicted aliens incarcerated in State prisons and local detention centers throughout the United States.