Immigrant murder convictions 'tens of thousands' higher than ICE's bombshell figures: data expert

The total number of immigrant noncitizens in the U.S. who have murder convictions is likely "tens of thousands" more than the 13,400 listed on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) national docket, given the criminal records of border-hoppers in their native countries are not baked into the data, a data expert tells Fox News Digital.

The bombshell figures released last week via ICE’s national docket show that 277 noncitizens are currently being held by ICE, while 13,099 noncitizens are on the non-detained docket with homicide convictions. ICE’s non-detained docket includes noncitizens who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not detained in ICE custody. 

Of the 13,099 convicted murderers not being detained by ICE, it is unclear how many are incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement, or roaming the streets. There are an additional 1,845 on the non-detained docket with pending homicide charges.

In total, 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories are on ICE’s national docket, which stretches back decades. 

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The figures underline the serious threat illegal immigration and not vetting immigrants thoroughly poses to law-abiding people living in the U.S. The figures sparked an outcry from border security advocates.

Sean Kennedy, who specializes in law enforcement and crime data analysis, said the numbers of noncitizens in the U.S. who have murder convictions — as well as convictions for other crimes like assault and rape — is much higher than the 13,376 on ICE’s detained and non-detained dockets because those convictions only apply to crimes committed in the U.S. and not murders committed in migrants’ home countries.

"We don't know how many people have come into the United States over the last decades, let alone in the last few years, who have criminal convictions or offenses overseas," Kennedy said. "Very few of the migrants who crossed the border who have criminal records will ever be properly vetted because the criminal records in their home countries are insufficient, they're not compatible with, or they're just plain not shared with the United States. And we've seen this over and over again."

Kennedy cited the case of a Peruvian gang leader, Gianfranco Torres-Navarro, who was wanted for nearly two dozen murders in his home country and entered the U.S. illegally at the Texas-Mexico border on May 16, as an example of how the vetting process is letting violent criminals into the U.S.

He was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol near Roma, Texas, before being released into the U.S. with a notice to appear for immigration proceedings, Fox News learned. It took almost two months before federal authorities learned Torres-Navarro was wanted in Peru for 23 killings, including the slaying of a retired police officer.

"He was a drug gang lord, and we didn't know that because Peru didn't tell us, or he wasn't listed in a database that we had access to because our databases are very limited," Kennedy said.  

Kennedy said that the federal database includes a list of people with mostly offenses that were committed in the U.S. and by people who are considered security threats, but there are lots of those who are security threats who are not identifiable, or their biometric data — such as fingerprints — is not being collected. 

"So if you're living in the mountains of Afghanistan and you go by a pseudonym, we have no idea [that] when you scan your fingerprints, you're that guy," Kennedy said, noting governments aren't forthcoming with the data. "The Taliban government isn't sharing that. The Venezuelans aren't telling us who their gangsters or mobsters are. The Chinese aren't telling us who their spies are, let alone the Russians or the Tajiks or anyone else."

Kennedy said that added into the mix is the roughly 2 million so-called "gotaways" who crossed the border over the last three years but never encountered Border Patrol.

"We have no idea who they are," he added. 

Kennedy noted that when Border Patrol encounters migrants at the border, the agency asks for basic information such as their name, place of birth and also collects biometric information and registers it with the National Crime Information Center, a national database of all state and local crime information. It also processes the data through the National Vetting Center list, which co-ordinates with various federal agencies like TSA and co-ordinates with other countries.

"But that data is very limited, too, because that's completely voluntary as to what countries submit … And worse than that, very few countries participate in agreements where they will share full and freely information about their criminal context," Kennedy said. 

"So we get very little information about foreigners crossing the border, and very little of it can be verified [and] many of the people who cross the border have no serious government documentation and sometimes none at all."        

The ICE data from last week shows that among those on the non-detained docket, 62,231 were convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 had drug convictions and 13,099 convicted of homicide. An additional 2,521 have kidnapping convictions and 15,811 have sexual assault convictions. 

It is not known how many of the noncitizens on the national docket entered the U.S. illegally or legally. For instance, a permanent resident Green Card holder who is convicted of a crime is subject to deportation once convicted and would therefore end up on the national docket.

Kennedy, who is the executive director of the Coalition for Law Order and Safety, a nonprofit research group which studies and advocates for effective public safety policies, said the lion’s share of the near 13,400 noncitizens convicted of homicide, carried out those killings while in the U.S., and that even if they have served their time they are not necessarily deported as their home countries can refuse to take them back. 

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That is because in 2001's Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to indefinitely detain people who would otherwise be deported if they cannot be deported.

Kennedy said there is no exact figure of the actual homicide crime convictions rate of noncitizens, but it can be gauged by extrapolating the numbers from a Texas investigation into noncitizen crimes and then applying them to the national rate.

That investigation, by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), found that since June 2011, illegal immigrants have been charged with over 1,100 homicides, more than 3,500 sexual assaults and 3,700 other sex offenses.

It meant that the overall Texas homicide conviction rate in that period was 2.88 per 100,000 residents, while the illegal immigrant rate was 3.25 per 100,000 residents, or 13% higher. Legal immigrants, by contrast, were convicted of homicide at significantly lower rates than illegal immigrants and the overall Texas population. 

"So if we extrapolate that across the United States, there would be tens of thousands of people in addition to these 13,000 who've committed a homicide here," Kennedy explained.

"There is a large number of people who are committing crimes in the United States who are here illegally that we know about. And there is a large number of people who are committing crimes in the United States who we don't know about. They could be gotaways or somehow slipped through the cracks in another way and that population is a wild card for US law enforcement because we can't deport them."

"When you're importing hundreds of thousands of young El Salvadorian men, or Venezuelan men, which for decades were homicide capitals of the world, it's likely that many of them have committed murder or have been accomplices to murder because their homicide rates were 20 times the U.S. rate," Kennedy added. 

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The Texas DPS investigation found that more than 20% of its incarcerated illegal immigrant killers were unknown to DHS, Kennedy said, adding this is likely replicated across other states as well – bringing the figures even higher again. 

"These are all preventable crimes. If these people hadn't come here, they wouldn't have committed these crimes," Kennedy explained. "So when we know someone has a criminal history, we have an obligation to protect our citizens first, not import the world whom some of them are criminals and offenders and violent and terrorists and other threats to U.S. public safety."