Of those 400,000, 13,000 had been convicted of murder, 15,000 had been convicted of sexual assault, and more than 50,000 had drug convictions. 

This is an epic scandal, although not for quite the reason some Republicans claim. 

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are not guilty of catching and releasing more than 13,000 murderers into the U.S. The convictions tabulated in the ICE data are all domestic convictions. That is, the crimes were committed after they arrived. The data do not include convictions for crimes committed in other countries. The Border Patrol does not have access to that data. None of these caveats make the matter any less of a scandal.

What the numbers do include are migrants known to ICE who are in the U.S. who have either been convicted of a crime or been accused of a crime and are not in ICE custody. For example, Laken Riley’s alleged murderer Jose Ibarra, who was known to ICE after Biden released him into the country on parole, would have been included in this data after he was charged with endangering a child and driving without a license in New York City. 

Ibarra would have been included in this data again after being charged with murdering and sexually assaulting Riley because he is being held by the state of Georgia, not ICE. This means many criminal migrants represented in the data are not in ICE custody but are in local law enforcement custody somewhere.

But many also are not. These criminal migrants are free to roam the country, as Ibarra did before he allegedly killed Riley. 

Many of the criminal migrants entered the country under previous administrations, and the crimes they committed happened years ago. But this does not absolve Biden and Harris of anything. The number of non-detained noncitizens tracked by ICE has exploded on the Biden-Harris watch, from 3 million in 2020 to almost 8 million today. Every time the Biden-Harris administration flies a migrant in from Haiti through its Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans parole program or paroles a migrant from Venezuela into the country at the southern border through the CBP One app, it adds to ICE’s non-detained docket. 

ICE does not have the capacity to track all these migrants and deport them when they commit crimes. Of almost 8 million migrants on ICE’s non-detained docket, 1.3 million are already under final orders of removal. This means they have received all their due process and an immigration judge has ordered them out of the country. But the Biden-Harris administration is not deporting these migrants — or even trying to do so. It is the policy of the president and the Democratic presidential nominee who wishes to replace him not to attempt to deport a migrant unless he or she commits a serious crime. This, under the warped definition applied, does not include theft, endangering a minor, or drunken driving. These criminal migrants are allowed to roam free.

Many jurisdictions offer such criminals sanctuary and refuse to cooperate with ICE. This is mentioned by ICE in the letter. The Biden-Harris administration allows these jurisdictions, which are all controlled by the Democratic Party, to continue sanctuary city policies.

Former President Donald Trump has promised to force Democratic-controlled cities and states to end sanctuary policies, and the federal government has leverage to make them comply. When Trump talks about “mass deportations,” it is criminal migrants detailed in ICE data whom he plans to deport first.

Some of the countries the migrants come from might not want to take them back. Trump can force them. If China doesn’t want to take its criminal migrants back, the State Department can stop issuing new visas to Chinese citizens who want to come here. If Venezuela doesn’t want to take its migrants back, Trump can slap tariffs on its imports. It is a matter of political will. 

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“The United States is a sovereign nation,” Harris said Friday in Arizona. “I believe we have a duty to set rules at our border and to enforce them, and I take that responsibility very seriously.” 

No, she clearly does not take the matter seriously. The data ICE released Friday show Harris to be a fraud on this issue. We have laws mandating the detention and deportation of criminal migrants. Harris, the border czar, is flatly ignoring the law.